Three Warriors
by Cavallo Alato
Summary: Annie Leonhardt, Bertholdt Fubar, Reiner Braun. Titan Trio -centric. (contains spoilers) "It wasn't a lie." Truthfully, they just wanted to go home. They didn't want to "live happily ever after". They simply wanted to "live".
1. the fall

HELLO. Because I'm currently obsessed with Shingeki no Kyojin, I love the titan trio, I'm stuck on **Emeralds**, and I'm procrastinating again, TAKE THIS!

**Disclaimer: SnK, Annie, Bertl, and Reiner don't belong to me. But I do have intense titantrio feels. (and JeanMarco feels)**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. the fall .xxx_

* * *

The wall was cool beneath his palm, and it was quiet, so quiet. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted what he thought was a wisp of grass, billowing gently in the wind, but it was just Annie, watching him wordlessly. As was customary of the girl, her hands were in her pockets and she was solemnly gazing at a spot on his back as she hid in the shadow of the taller Reiner. A few seconds of staring turned the two blondes into waving stalks of straw, melding into the green, grassy background.

The sounds within the city were subtle, but still there all the same. He felt the rumble of carts rolling over uneven pavement, the tinny vibration of voices through the very wall itself.

Bertholdt blinked.

"Well?" Reiner asked, striding up to the wall and giving it a good hard kick, despite the rebound on his scruffily shoed toe. The shorter boy gave Bertholdt a curious glance, an eyebrow quirking up mischievously, as if they were just going around stealing people's laundry laid out to dry. Like old times.

Like yesterday.

"I'm going, then," Annie said flatly, without waiting for a response. "Hold this for me."

She shoved her meager pack at Reiner's chest, but Reiner immediately returned it.

"I can't hold that," he replied simply. The two began to bicker, each with their differing levels of interest and enthusiasm.

Bertholdt watched them with a mild degree of amusement — had they been home, with Reiner and Annie laughing as they looked down at Bertholdt, struggling to climb up a tree despite his height advantage, Bertholdt would have smiled.

But he didn't.

Instead, he brought his hand to his lips, and stared at the looming wall before him. As his teeth closed around his knuckles, the salt of his sweat stung his eyes and he squeezed them shut.

* * *

The wall snapped beneath his hands like a toothpick, suddenly small, so small. He leaned on the structure, so weak before him, and glanced down at his companions. Annie had long since taken her leave, it seemed — a speck in the distance, with only the bob of her gold spun hair to identify her. But Reiner, smiling Reiner, he simply gazed up and mimed kicking the wall. From his height, Bertholdt could see that Reiner's one toe protruded through his shoe, and could only think that the poor leather needed mending.

Reiner waved insistently.

Bertholdt pulled back his leg and swung hard.

The most he could remember was Reiner tugging him through a gigantic gap in the wall, the smaller boy hardly able to carry Bertholdt's weight. In an instant, Annie was with them, scooping them up onto her shoulders and dodging among the myriad of titans that had stormed their way into the city. She ran until they reached the end of the block, the gate.

"I can't let you guys take all the credit, can I?" Reiner scrambled down Annie's arm and hopped onto the rooftop of an evacuated building. His nonchalance unnerved Bertholdt, but seeing as their third party member was not particularly impressed, the tall boy held tight to a lock of her hair and waited.

It wasn't long before the crash, and as soon as Reiner returned, small and on foot, they were off again. The people didn't particularly care that a titan was running along with two boys on her shoulders — they could hardly process her existence as she thundered by at impossible speeds — and as they crossed deeper and deeper, the terrain flying by beneath them, Bertholdt glanced back.

Debris, smoke, screams, and blood. Everywhere, blood.

* * *

Wall Maria had fallen.

* * *

/chapter

I don't really know. Just some random drabbles and stuff.

I really want to write a JeanMarco fluff one-shot thingy.

g'night.


	2. beloved

I should be writing a lab report.

**Disclaimer: The amazing Isayama owns SnK and its characters.**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. beloved .xxx_

* * *

It wasn't that she was angry. She was, in fact, rather indifferent to it all. It seemed that, wherever she went, people thought that the dour expression on her face was meant to convey discontent with the world.

But that was just Annie.

And she wasn't about to change who she was.

* * *

She never minded, but she could feel. He was in the background, yet he stood out like a miserable bruise to the cheekbone. He sulked, but quietly. He was always nervously sweating away, trying not to fiddle and shift and tug at his sleeves, putting on a stern face when he wanted to.

But Annie felt his eyes on her, dependent eyes, soft eyes, kind eyes.

And she didn't mind when he reached over just to touch her shoulder and maybe, just maybe, hold her hand.

* * *

Annoyed was the wrong word to describe how she felt. She could not brush away the insistency with which he approached her, the furrowed set to his brow and the overtly grim set to his jaw. He preached and he comforted, he was two things at once and yet neither at the same time. She worried, inwardly, because he smiled too easily at the rest of them.

But Annie didn't try to fix his words when he claimed to be a "soldier", because she knew that he'd remember to be a "warrior" when it counted.

And when he threw back his hood and brandished his blade with intent clear as day, she took him into her hands and pretended she never had to let go.

* * *

/chapter

okay.

I think I enjoy little chapters. :D


	3. heart

I should do homework.

**Disclaimer: I don't own Annie/Bertl/Reiner ~**

If you haven't noticed, this is fullll of spoilers XDDD

Shingeki no spoilers.

#jaegerlols.

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. heart .xxx_

* * *

He marched to the beat of the drums, the beat of his heart, his footsteps, his comrades. _Detached_, was a word he did not associate with himself, even though Annie mouthed it to him in the form of a casual insult the other trainees sniggered at. _Blunt_? Not quite. _Strong_. Yes.

The thrumming of nerves among the 104th cadets had no effect on his steely demeanor; he was strong.

He marched like a soldier, for he wore a soldier's jacket and a soldier's gear. He donned the green cape like a hero, mounted his horse, and thundered through the very gates of a wall he once tried to break.

"Reiner," Bertholdt whispered, "Reiner, _remember_."

But he watched his tall, dark-haired friend become a speck in the distance, a horse and rider among many. A soldier never looked back — not once did he falter.

Armin's screams and Jean's shouts of terror were deafening. He had to save his comrades, or die trying. But the pounding of hooves numbed him, and the closer he came to the titan, the more his heart wrenched under that pinned, green cloak. As the _wings of freedom_ fluttered in the wind, he threw back his hood and drew his blades, his battle cry loud and clear.

The cry of a warrior.

* * *

_Her hands were warm, and she smiled at him._

_ "Back, center."_

* * *

"What are you now?"

"I am a soldier."

* * *

_I remember_.

* * *

Ehh. I don't really know.

Drabbles are like doodles.

but I do love that titan trio.


	4. remember

I've decided to do these from the perspective of each titan trio member, in a cycling pattern. These are kind of fun (procrastinating activities) to write...though I should study.

Guh.

Whooo.

**Disclaimer: Isayama is kami-sama. Therefore, these characters are his. **

**REMEMBER: This story is so full of spoilers that you should throw it out - don't eat moldy food. (no, read the story, don't throw it out though XD)**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

xxx. remember .xxx

* * *

It's crowded, loud, and Shardis is constantly yelling their eardrums to shreds, but each and every one of the trainees dutifully continues their chores without protest (except maybe a groan from Connie and the rumble of Sasha's stomach).

He's washing the dishes, and he's slow — "Hey," Jean snaps, "Could you work any slower?" — but Marco smiles at him sparingly and Annie says nothing. He scrubs the plates faster, but he is nervous, always nervous. His fingers clench around the cheap utensils, but as much as he tries to push it away, the simple weight of a spoon in his hand reminds him of Wall Maria crumbling beneath his palms.

_It's not the same_, he tells himself. _It's _not_ the same._

There is a cool hand on his, briefly. He hardly has time to say anything before Annie wraps her thin, seemingly delicate fingers around the spoon and slides it from his quivering — he realized he was shaking, ever so slightly — grip. The blonde unceremoniously slaps the spoon down amongst the rest of its fellow utensils, sponge nimbly lathering up the contents of the sink before handing them to Jean for the rinse.

"Go dry the plates," she says flatly, shouldering him aside despite the fact that he towered over her.

And then he's got a towel in his hands and he's rubbing the grubby plates to a fine sheen as his heart gradually slows to a regular _ba-bump, ba-bump. _His forehead is slick with sweat, but that's how it usually is, so he doesn't mind.

Annie clambers up onto a stool and holds out her hand; he hands her the plate, and she begins to put them away.

The trainees are filing out now, getting ready for evening training, and it's almost as if their lives are happy.

But Bertholdt knows better.

He knows it's only a fleeting moment in time, ephemeral as the very titan beating in his heart, the flash of transformation and the metallic tang of blood on his tongue.

There is a horrifying crash, and Bertholdt looks down to see that he's dropped a plate.

It lays in shards, broken glass skittering across the floor like people diving away from their inevitable deaths.

Marco and Jean and all the rest of them are long gone, chattering away outside like pigeons flocked to a generous chunk of bread. It's just Annie and Bertholdt, staring at the broken china littered across the creaky wood boards.

Wordlessly, Bertholdt bites his lower lip and grabs the broom.

Annie touches his sleeve, and he turns.

Almost inaudibly, she tells him, "You're fine," and she nods. "No one's leaving you."

_She knows_, he thinks with horror, because it's his greatest fear that someday, Annie and Reiner will turn their backs on him and he will be alone for all of eternity, trailing along the same, endless path of despair laid out by his own hands, his own tarot cards read by his own eyes.

_But she's there_, and it makes all the difference to Bertholdt, he realizes as he sweeps up the broken pieces.

"Clumsy," she mutters, offering a dustpan as she shakes her head and clicks her tongue. He thinks he murmurs an apology, but he can't be sure, because he can only remember the soft gold of her hair and the slope of her shoulders as she leans down and makes sure she's got it all.

_She's there, and she's not leaving_, not leaving, he repeats to himself, insistently, desperately, hoping that if he repeats the mantra to himself long enough, he'll be able to hold onto her tighter. To never let go.

* * *

And so, it is when Mikasa's blade shears him open and Annie's face flashes past his eyes, he remembers that _she is there_ and so is Reiner, and the warrior within lifts his hand to his lips, ignoring the screams of murder that are Eren's eyes.

Blood is drawn.

* * *

/chapter

I really love Bertl-turtle.


	5. choice

I wasn't sure what to do with this one, haha. Kind of got lost. It's going in order of Bertholdt - Annie - Reiner.

_Bertholdt - the style is more like a quiet, contemplating one._

_Annie - I like to explore her inner turmoil, bouncing between quiet, like Bertholdt, and more emotionally driven, like Reiner._

_Reiner - his will include more dialogue, more thoughts regarding the 104th trainees/other people, and written in a different style._

"Style" is just my own way of trying to change it up, I guess. Not truly a change, but just trying things out.

**Disclaimer: I don't own BertReinerAnnie, and some of the dialogue is from chapters 46/47 (along the lines of what happened, anyway)**

Cameo dialogue: Ymir and Eren!

I don't even know...

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. choice .xxx_

* * *

The sheets were cold, the mattresses thin and hard. The tossing and turning of the other trainees was the least of his worries — even though it was possible for Bertholdt to end up bowling him over at some point in the night. Jean snored often; he snored every day, actually. Eren woke up to a face full of dry saliva — "I do _not_ drool, you horse face!" he claimed. Connie might as well have stayed up the whole night, because he chattered away even though no one listened.

He envied Marco and Millius and Franz and Samuel, because they seemed to sleep so soundly. Perhaps it was because they turned their backs to the world and tried to ignore the nightmares that flashed beneath their eyelids.

If they even had nightmares, that is.

Reiner was sure that every time Armin closed his eyes, the boy went to war. He was sure that though Eren appeared to be a fool at times, the emotion-driven boy was clenching his teeth and battling his own memories with nothing but his determination. During the day, if he looked hard enough, Reiner could spot the lethal blade hidden beneath Mikasa's apathetic gaze. A heart that held onto her loved ones, as if she believed that her overprotective concern would suffice.

Every now and then, Reiner would sit quietly at the table, chewing the abominable mash made of potatoes that Sasha hadn't tucked into her pockets. He appeared to brood, but he was honestly lost in an endless river of thought. Bertholdt would glance at him, concerned, but Reiner simply stuffed an overcooked baby carrot into his mouth and ruminated over his meal.

"Reiner," Bertholdt murmured softly, but Reiner ignored the taller boy because he was listening to Eren, Eren who was shaking as he dropped his spoon and claimed that he could kill all the titans.

_What about the Armored Titan? Did you see that one? The one that broke Wall Maria._

_ I've heard about it, but it looked like a normal titan to me._

"Bertholdt, I can't decide if I like peas or carrots."

His dark-haired companion shifted uncomfortably, biting his lower lip. A bead of sweat slipped down his face.

_I can't remember which one I am._

* * *

He pretended not to feel the anger radiating off of Eren's furiously quaking body. Pulses of pain rang through his head incessantly, relentless, lasting, heavy. He was exhausted.

"We don't have any water," Ymir stated blandly, looking rather unamused. But then again, Ymir always had that dry, sardonic expression on her face, and it didn't matter where or when or with whom or for what — Ymir would be Ymir, a stark contrast to the seething, brooding boy beside her.

"I know, but it's impossible to get any in this situation," Reiner replied, sighing. Ymir grumbled, but simply folded her arms.

The air was heavy, but heavy with what? Reiner wished they had some time to just unwind, to recollect — "We've been working continuously…ever since the titans appeared, we haven't had any food or drink…" — but he remained optimistic, as much as he could — "Fortunately, the wall wasn't broken. I'd really like to get some sleep now."

A wry chuckle as a hazy blanket settled over his shoulders, and he added, "I guess we can talk about promotions later. I think we definitely deserve it."

It was warm, but not uncomfortably so. Snug, like a pair of arms tenderly wrapped round him.

"We did well in a situation we knew little about. As soldiers, we deserve some recognition." Reiner nodded to himself. "Yeah, that'd be nice."

_I'm going to kill you if you keep talking as if everything is fine!_

"Reiner," Bertholdt interrupted.

But he couldn't feel anything, because the little blanket of snow that enveloped him was so fine, snowflakes crawling up the windowpanes on a cold day, and he couldn't see anything, couldn't feel, couldn't understand a thing. He didn't want to reach out.

_Which one are you?_

And everything hurt.

* * *

/chapter

I was trying to convey how he's confused by just randomly jumping from thing to thing. Sorry if it doesn't make sense, lol.

Also: episode 21 feels. *mourning* Rest in Peace, humanity's strongest squad.

(a friend just killed off all the characters in her story... Naruto, that is. *more feels*)

On a different note: wtf I hit tumblr post limit? THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED.

(I should've written my three essays...)


	6. rain

Bertl and Annie are so much easier to write than Reiner. O.o

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK.**

**Notes: I need to write my essays, dammit! Oh: and JeanMarco = asdfgh OTP = *sobbing forever***

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. rain .xxx_

* * *

He found himself curled up by Connie's bunk, a beam of moonlight illuminating his top half. The sun had yet to rise, and most of his fellow trainees tucked away in various positions, while his own mattress was empty, the blanket stripped halfway between his toes and where Reiner bunked below him. No longer was this a predicament for him; he had found himself in far stranger places, stranger times, with bewildered faces before him. (Jean, for one, had not appreciated the one time he found the gentle giant sprawled across his chest, though Marco found it endearing.)

Speaking of Marco, said freckled boy was currently poised above Bertholdt, a spare blanket in hand.

"You looked cold," whispered the other dark-haired trainee, offering a wan smile. There were dark circles under Marco's eyes; he'd had a tough day of training, and being knocked into the dirt by a hastily flying Jaeger had given him quite the bruising. (Jean had, rather indignantly, demanded to know where the impressively large purple spot on Marco's cheek had come from; Marco refused to divulge the name of the unlucky soul that had knocked him squarely during fist-to-fist combat.)

"Thanks," Bertholdt replied, accepting the blanket. He really should've returned to his bunk, but there were some nights were he felt more comfortable leaning against the wall or sitting cross-legged beneath the window, bathing in the moonlight. He sometimes found a silent companion in the ill-tempered, arrogant Jean, who contemplated whether the stars he saw were the same his family saw at home. Bertholdt found it intriguing; the fact that Jean attempted to tiptoe past Marco, and that Marco always kept an eye on the other boy despite pretending to be asleep.

"Will it rain?" asked Marco softly.

Befuddled, Bertholdt expressionlessly glanced at his classmate. He was rewarded with a tired smile and a brief chuckle before Marco padded back to his bunk and promptly fell asleep.

_Will it rain?_ _What do you think, Bertholdt? Will tomorrow be a good day to set out?_

Suddenly the floor was cold and the moonlight harsh on his skin. The eerie lunar glow failed to comfort him, and he quickly heaved himself to his feet.

Jean wasn't outside on the porch tonight, so Bertholdt found himself occupying the usually taken spot just through the cabin's threshold. A nervous sweat began to soak his shirt, but he ignored it; cold shivers ran down his spine.

So, when someone quietly stepped onto the porch stairs, tugging at her sweater as the wooden boards creaked beneath her feet, he was so frozen that he could hardly startle.

She sat down beside him.

And when the door behind him opened with a heave and a wheeze, he shuddered with relief because now there were two people to lend him warmth, and they sat beside him until the sun came up, and one forgot his reason for sitting there, and the other donned her mask of icy indifference.

But he was never alone.

"Marco," he called softly, waiting for the boy with the smattering of freckles on his cheeks to turn.

"What's up, Bertholdt?"

"It'll be sunny today."

* * *

/chapter

idek.

bertl-turtle.


	7. sun

Last one for today, I think. I'm on a roll, haha.

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Titan Trio.**

In which Annie contemplates.

companion to: "rain".

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. sun .xxx_

* * *

She made useless mental notes about everyone.

Define: Useless?

Sasha was loud — her infuriating chorus of snores racked the entire cabin with a deep tremor.

Christa was quiet — she burrowed away like a little, herbivorous animal in its cove.

Ymir never slept — her eyes wide open until the moon set and the sun rose, it seemed.

Mikasa went down kicking and screaming — the nightmares that dragged her into the depths of sleep were interspersed with piercing wails and muffled sobs (though no one would ever dare say a word).

Mina was sweet — she bid everyone goodnight, even those who didn't wish to be spoken to.

Hannah was innocent — smiles at the thought of a certain Franz put her to sleep like a baby.

Define: Useful?

She had nothing to think of, nothing to say, only silence. Constantly, the information pertinent to her "cause" was filed away and organized immediately, but tonight lingered, something thick in her fingers, a stain in the clothe. Nothing came quickly.

She decided she wasn't going to fall asleep anytime soon, so she pushed the covers away and slipped into the white sweater that was her second skin. Nimbly avoiding the creaky panels, a light tread to the doorway.

Past Sasha, who snored.

Past Christa, who slept.

Past Mikasa, who dreamed.

Past Mina, who smiled.

Past Hannah, who loved.

Only the eyes of the sleepless Ymir followed her, a deliberate trail, wordlessly acknowledging her consciousness.

And then Ymir's gaze melted into darkness, leaving only the fresh air and the outside world to blow back Annie's disheveled hair and frustrating sluggishness.

Define: Important?

Instructor Keith Shadis was imposing — he bore the intimidating presence of a man once broken into pieces, but then picked up the shards to stab away whatever harm that approached him.

Dazz was weak — he succumbed to his own fears too easily.

Millius was silent, and Franz was sociable — the former was friendly enough, by regular standards, blending into the background almost as well as someone Annie knew, while the latter dared to love in such a cruel world.

Nack, and Thomas, and Samuel, they were indecisive — surely, in their moment of hesitation, some fortunate titan might have their evening meal.

Connie was bold — a trapped bird, with only a voice to free himself.

Marco was kind — he almost seemed to wash away the bitterness, the requiem rain that restored the peace between brittle bonds, sending empty souls away.

Jean was boastful — his pride would become hesitation, and his hesitation would become a titan's dinner. (If only Armin had not been so sharp.)

Armin, the greatest mind out of these miserable trainees — _the one who rushed to his death_, was the one Armin wished to avenge. Armin Arlert, who knew even before Reiner did.

Reiner was lost — he stumbled onto his original path now and then, as he threw back his hood and drew his blades, but more often than not, he believed himself a member of this pack of soldiers, a false family.

Bertholdt was invisible — except to Annie and Reiner, to say the least.

Eren was angry — no one required any analysis to determine such a thing.

It was a quiet night, cool air rushing by in a pleasant breeze. But the moon's ghostly fingers chilled her as tendrils of night stroked her skin, and she trotted across the path, toes light on the gravel.

Define: Unimportant?

Past Shadis, who never saw her slip outside.

Hidden from Dazz, Millius, Franz, Nack, Thomas, Samuel, the blind.

Insignificant to Connie, to Marco and Jean.

"A nice person", according to Armin, but unnoticed at the moment nonetheless.

But Annie felt the anger and the worry and the confusion of the last three from a distance. The anger of a boy who battled in both waking and sleeping times, who harbored a painful hate for all that he didn't understand, for all that he wanted but could no longer have.

It was a feeling Annie knew well; and she stowed it away, under lock and key, until she felt it no more.

Define: Emotion?

The brooding figure on the porch steps did not say hello. Simply enough, he let out a shuddered sigh of relief as she settled beside him, following his wandering gaze as if they were watching the stars reflected on the empty, colorless soil.

And as if on cue, Reiner seemed to find his way, because in that brief moment before the sun rose, he knew exactly why they were here.

Why, when the sphere of fire crept over the horizon, its crimson mane billowing across the sky, Bertholdt began to shake. It was as if the sun itself was peeking over the wall of the world, peeking in on them, watching them, seeing them, _knowing them_.

Annie stayed until Reiner forgot again, and Bertholdt stopped shaking.

She stayed long enough to hear Bertholdt solemnly inform them, as if his life depended on it, that it would be sunny that day.

But for her, it rained.

She remembered it clearly — on that day, it rained like the world was crying.

Or had it?

Define: Memory?

* * *

/chapter

On that day, humankind received a grim reminder:

that humanity lived in fear of

ESSAYS and

PROCRASTINATION

*MUST GO NOW*

*GOTTA GO FAST*

*GOTTA KILL THE TITA-HOMEWORK*


	8. humanity

Just kidding, I'm back! In any case, I know I botched up the order, but from NOW ON it should be Bertl, then Annie, then Reiner.

**Disclaimer: Noooooo this series is not mineeeeeee. That wretched yet well-known line is not mine either.**

**Note 1: I wrote this in a slightly different style for Reiner this time. Meh. It was easier, lol.**

**Note 2: Listening to "Sail" by Awolnation while mourning the deaths of Levi's squad is not a good idea. *sobs harder***

**Note 3: When I mouthed "RADIOACTIVE" to the song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, my mom thought I was swearing at her.**

**wow.**

**Note 4: Today, I put a lettuce leaf down and made a face out of a cucumber and some herbs, and announced - "COLOSSAL CUCUMBER IS HERE".**

**Note 5: My cat is Colossal Cat. So fat.**

**/end notes.**

I really like tying chapters together, if you haven't noticed :)

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. humanity .xxx_

* * *

_Footsteps. _

He taps the pen against his chin, because as he writes poetry in the dark, the only one to notice is Bertholdt, and the habit is so familiar that neither say a word. Only Bertholdt, who has rolled to some peculiar position alongside their bunk, watches him in thoughtful silence. Or, perhaps, the gentle giant as lolled himself to sleep, the telltale patter of rain an obedient follower of his clairvoyant slumber poses.

He crosses out _Footsteps_, and in exchange, he jots down _Strength._

But that doesn't sound quite right, and scratches that out too.

It is the ending to his poem, a poem in which he briefly remembers what he's here for. The gentle wash of rain is cleansing; he easily calls upon the strength that the word _warrior_ lends him as it passes through his lips.

He, of course, doesn't appear like a man for poetry.

Reiner, writing poetry?

He smiles to himself as Bertholdt grumbles in his sleep and procedes to curl over sideways and lean on his shoulder.

_Footsteps_, he writes again, because in his mind he is running, feet hitting the ground miles and miles apart, the ground quaking and the houses of Shiganshina shattering beneath his toes.

_Impact_, he put down, in a loopy script that belied his brawny appearance. He decides that his poem won't end there, because there's more to convey than just the steely crash of his entirety against a 50 meter wall.

Bertholdt stirs.

Reiner wonders what his friend would think of the poem. His friend, a boy that tries his hardest to meld into the background, if only his trembling fear did not radiate from him like a light in the dark.

_Fear_, the ink creates.

Bertholdt, who wants to cry when the sun comes up because all he sees in the reflection of his own face peering over a doomed city.

Reiner tugs the blanket from the bottom bunk, his bed, and tosses it over Bertholdt's shoulders. The taller boy snores into his shoulder.

_Duty_. It is their duty, their purpose, their goal. In order to return home, Reiner decides that this is their mission. He dreads, however, the moment his mind decides to forget that mission; and the seconds tick by. Reiner writes a little faster, thinks a little harder; his scratchy pen digs a little harder into the strip of paper he's salvaged from who-knows-where.

_Soldiers_.

But then immediately after,

_Warriors._

"Warrior," he murmurs. "Strength."

It is a good combination.

The moon is gentle tonight, and Reiner pauses as he listens to the sounds of living human beings, disregarding his lack of time to spare. It's a race, it always has been, but he supposes that today, the turtle won't catch the hare napping — just a status check, he thinks.

The gentle breathing of Marco on the next bunk over, the snores of Eren across the room — Reiner is glad, because the poor boy hasn't had such a peaceful, dreamless sleep in quite some time.

He snaps back from the compassionate soldier that is gripping his arm.

Reiner looks down, and only sees Bertholdt blindly grab for the blanket. The blond lets the taller boy curl up beside him, wrapping the thin blanket around the both of them, even though it's hardly enough.

Returning to his poem, he reads and rereads. He has written, between the long lines of free verse and sometimes a play on words, _Useful _and _Useless, Important_, and _Unimportant_,_._

His one-word stanzas are sharp, like daggers.

His lengthy, in-depth couplets run to the hoof beats of horses, strung at a suspended canter, the tension pulled taught in the moment when the animal leaps into the air between strides.

_Emotion_, he writes, _front waves like screams, leaving nothing but half an essence behind_. _Trust is not enough, unless you plow through until the end._

_ And even then…_

He allows his pen to trail, because a sharp homesickness permeates him, and he appreciates Bertholdt's steady company beside him. A glance to the door; he wishes that their aloof, unsociable third member would return to the pack, just for once.

_Memory_, he finishes.

But upon revision, he realizes that it is not the ending he needs to write, but the beginning. Reiner stares at the blank space he'd left for a good beginning, having jumped to the main body of his poem before anything. He is writing a story, perhaps, a tale in the form of alternating points and lines. A person here, a chain there. A titan here, a death there.

He recalls a time when sleep abandoned Marco and Jean, and the two spent most of the night bickering (though it was rather one-sided, consisting mainly of Jean's complaints and Marco's mild chuckles). He remembers Connie's insistence that they raid the supplies room and slather paint over the girls' cabins. Millius's unexpectedly frightening stories, the worst of which he saved for the last night of October (though for what reason, no one really knew), a tradition established since the first year. In the second year, Thomas's nightly jokes that kept everyone awake, a dim thrum of uncontrollable giggles reverberating through the cabin until the ever acute Shadis appeared at the doorway. (Marco hated the jokes about his freckles, but it was mostly Jean's indignant bristling at his nickname — _horse face_ — and Eren's typical anger.)

Eren. Eren Jaeger.

Reiner's memory of a night trek with a few low-lit lanterns surfaces, and he knows that he had been lucid then. He had been a warrior, intent on going home. He had acknowledged Eren's determination, his grit, his emotion.

He acknowledged the trigger.

His introduction is written now, because he has decided. Reiner abandons the perspective from which he has written the rest of his poem — that is, his own. No longer is he outside the walls, listening to the thunderous stampede of titans' footsteps as someone he knows scoops him up into her arms.

No, he is inside the walls.

He is inside the fear, the terror, the blackness of humanity in all its ugliness.

His pen lifts, and the beginning reads:

_On that day, mankind received a grim reminder…_

* * *

/chapter

Actually, I didn't announce "COLOSSAL CUCUMBER IS HERE."

I actually said: "ON THAT DAY, MANKIND RECEIVED A GRIM REMINDER ... THAT HUMANITY LIVED IN FEAR OF THE VEGGIES."


	9. tears

*still needs to write that essay*

edit: *THOSE essays*

**disclaimer: not mine not mine not mine lol**

**notes: annie's nose fan club.**

**THE FEMALE TITAN COULD BE ANNIEONE. I hope you eren't mad I used some puns.**

**does anybodty actually care? Oh well, be on the arlert for more spoilers. Did I try too hardt? -yes, I did. XD**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. tears .xxx_

* * *

It wasn't the titan clawing at the tree trunk below that was frightening. The tremors that shook the entire forest sent shivers down his spine, because he could only imagine the scenario taking place. The hoarse scream that reverberated for miles and miles were knives raking down his nerves. It pulled his core taught; he wanted to fly there, to fly to her aid.

And then it was eerily quiet, the only sound was the echo of a gunshot as the Commander signaled their retreat.

But he knew, and they knew, and she knew.

He cast a glance over his shoulder as he mounted his horse, but he didn't spot Reiner amongst the other squads. They were on opposite sides of the forest, he supposed.

He attempted to let the steady drum of horse's hooves on hard-packed ground dull the tremors in his heart. Nonetheless, his feet felt heavy in the stirrups, and he fell just short of collapsing over his horse's neck and tumbling to the ground.

A second scream jolted him upright.

Anguish was evident in this cry, and a familiar face flashed before his eyes.

_Hey. It's been five years, hasn't it?_

Vengeful hate and drawn blades, and it was Eren. Eren's pain and Eren's resolve, his assiduousness and penchant for starting fights. The lack of hesitation as he drew his blades and came in for the kill — only for his prey to disappear within the smoke and the chaos.

No, not the prey.

_You are the food and we are the hunter_, someone had once told him.

Bertholdt steeled himself.

* * *

It had been five years, but he remembered as clear as day. His hand on the wall and his toes in the grass, a friendly ant crawling up his ankle. He had hardly anything in that little pack of his, and neither did the other two. After this, they would run into the "safety" of the walls and subsist on whatever meager bread provisions the Military Police decided to dole out. He wasn't a picky one, that Bertholdt, nor did he show much emotion.

But he knew, and Reiner knew, and Annie knew.

"Well?"

Bertholdt brought his hand to his mouth.

"I'm going, then."

He didn't turn back, but he heard her go.

There was a pause, and she turned to say,

* * *

"Just don't die."

* * *

He is galloping so fast, his horse's hooves hardly touching the ground, and though the birds startle into the air and the tormented cry of a boy gone made screeches through the air, he keeps going.

Because he knows, and they know, and she knows.

* * *

"I won't die."

* * *

/chapter

idk

this is more like titan trio stream of consciousness writing

anything that comes out is put down

top of the head

lol.


	10. fear

Short one!

Okay, I'll do homework (after I watch Free! that is...hehe)

**disclaimer: I don't own Snk but HEY THE CHAPTER'S COMING SOON**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. fear .xxx_

* * *

There is nothing quite like the sensation of falling.

At first, it's light, a trickling thrum on your heart and your stomach and the ends of your fingertips like a hummingbird made of air is carrying each and every part of you upwards, its wings beating unimaginably fast.

But then the world is a rock, and you are the lead that is destined to be at the earth's core.

Usually, she feels neither. The steady tension along her 3D Maneuver Gear is perfectly distributed, and a slight shift of her body initiates a twist or a turn as she descends; she is fearless.

* * *

"Fall, Annie."

* * *

The sharp pang of an unrecognizable emotion slices through her core like the iridescent glow of an unnaturally bright butterfly sparkling in a dull setting. It is only when she feels her father gripping her shoulders and begging her to come home someday that Annie realizes she feels fear.

And she is terrified.

* * *

It's an endless dream, full of muffled voices and soft pitter-patters. The soft ping of water dripping echoes softly, and the faces become rippled patterns in the surface. She feels rage and anger and sadness wafting towards her, but they are thud drearily into a cold wall, and there is nothing but emptiness inside her.

* * *

Somewhere far, far away, Annie knows that someone remembers who she is.

* * *

/chapter

I like writing in the present tense. It's a nice experimental style for me. :D


	11. song

*shrugs*

Levi doing the THING is coming this week...

Also, did it pain anyone to see Rin so sad? (free!)

Also: Swimming Mackerelmore needs more love.

**Disclaimer: snk not mine, not mine, not mine**

**Note: idk I'm really just testing out different writing styles (or just spitting stuff out) when I do these...hope you like it lol**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. song .xxx_

* * *

The moment he throws back the door, all he can remember is the gaping mouth of a titan before it closes down in an explosion of blood and screams on his friend. Beady eyes and thin, oily black hair, teeth of knives reflected in the terror of his face.

Someone tells him to run — maybe it's Bertholdt, he can't really remember — and they're stumbling away from the chewed up mass of bones and ripped flesh that was once Berik.

For months and months, there was a horrible, echoing mantra in his head.

_Berik is dead, Berik is dead._

_ The titan ate Berik,_

_ And Berik is dead._

And it went from _kill the titans_ to _avenge Berik_, but what did they mean if they both meant the same thing? If he killed all the titans, wouldn't he kill himself?

_Am I titan?_

It sounded almost like a children's song, the kind that rings out in the village center as the girls in long dresses and the boys with their hats skip rope and sing, sing, sing.

He sometimes mumbles it to himself as he swings along in his 3D maneuver gear. He murmured his old friend's name as he trudged through the grass once upon a time, when the walls were intact and Annie whistled along without a care in the world.

* * *

And then there's metal on his tongue and metal in his hands, and the vengeful one has bloody murder in her eyes. There is the flash of an old red scarf, and then he screams Bertholdt's name, because what else can they do?

He hardly remembers what happens, but Bertholdt is clambering out of the clouds and he's got a boy in his arms, but _who is that boy_, and _where am I?_

He lets the dull thud of his footsteps comfort him, because he is still lost, but allows Bertholdt's quiet directions to guide him. _Footsteps_, _impact_, a thousand other words but those two are the most important. Then the moon is up, and he wonders if he should contemplate its miniscule sliver, but instead he keeps running until the copse of trees becomes taller than he.

His head hurts.

He was supposed to _know_, but he hardly knew anything. Ymir, with her derisive smirk and her folded arms. Eren, with his piercing eyes and just barely reined-in rage.

"Reiner, which one are you?"

He can't decide, _he can't possibly decide_, because he doesn't _know_, and his head is on the verge of splitting. And Reiner wishes that someone would just cleave his head in two, because he'd rather be a pool of blood than suffer through this excruciating pain, this bursting of his very sanity.

He wishes, in that minute second, that a titan would just open its mouth and let him fall into its maw, to be gnashed by its horrid teeth and to slide down its putrid throat.

And they would tell the others that a titan ate Reiner.

A titan ate Reiner.

A titan ate Re—

_The titan ate Berik._

Reiner stares at Ymir; he isn't aware that he's shaking in his very boots. Hardly cognizant of the fact that Bertholdt is sitting there, staring at him, doubting him, waiting for him. Eren voices his confusion, but he's only a cricket in the grass, a sound of the background. And Ymir, her owlish blinks are slow and deliberate, and he can see the beady black eyes of the titan that ate Berik.

_The titan ate Berik,_

_ And Berik is dead._

"Don't worry," Reiner manages to croak in response, when Bertholdt stands and leans in close. "I'm a warrior right now."

Because

_Berik is dead, Berik is dead._

_ The titan ate Berik,_

_ And Berik is dead._

He wants to ask Ymir if she remembers who she ate.

* * *

She didn't.

* * *

/chapter

I really like Ymir, haha.

But.

Seriously.

New chapter of SnK soon! ASHGlkasjfkjfkkjk


	12. persevere

I don't really know?

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK because IRVIN YOUR ARM and ARMIN HOW and REINER THROWING TITANS and ****_IT'S THE TITAN THAT ATE THEIR MOM._**

**Note: contains stuff from the latest chapter (SnK 49) so if it doesn't make sense...read the chapterrr.**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. persevere .xxx_

* * *

There was blood and steam seeping from what seemed like his heart, like the gears inside his core had screeched to a halt and were malfunctioning. He hung there, not quite thinking, not quite comprehending. The straps of his stolen gear pressed into his thighs and his arms and his back, reminding him that _he was still here_ but _she was not_.

There was a powerful gust of steam, and Bertholdt turned to look at Reiner, whose titan body radiated an incredible heat.

But the boy lay there, limply suspended by his 3D Maneuver Gear.

_Hang in there, Bertholdt._

"Reiner," he managed to croak — was that his own voice? — "_Reiner, _they—"

But Reiner knew, the moment he gently cradled his best friend into his hand and settled him onto his massive titan shoulder. Bertholdt watched as the armored titan elbowed a league of flesh-hungry monsters out of his way, pausing to scoop up a smaller one like a wrestler.

And then there were flying titans.

* * *

When he was young, there used to be a small black cat in his village. He would leave a bit of bread out for it every day, and if he got lucky, a strip of wild turkey that they had managed to catch. It was dangerous, sparing food like that, but he was a kindhearted boy that could not bear to see anything starve.

And then one day, while the echoes of Berik's sobs and howling roars thrummed through his bones and rattled his teeth, and they ran for miles and miles, he saw the cat sitting by his house, waiting for a few meager scraps.

Hoping.

Living.

Continuing.

And when Reiner grabbed his hand and _she _grabbed his other, he, too, kept going.

* * *

Bertholdt wondered what _she _would think. Would she ignore them, would she praise them, or would she look down on their idiotic actions with the same, detached gaze that made her so beautiful?

He touched his chest; there was hardly any blood, save for the crusted red on Irvin's blade. Mostly healed on the outside, though the inside was a different story.

A titan's body crashed down beside — his friends? His enemies? — his former fellow trainees, and he watched Armin's expression particularly carefully.

Armin, who, at the Commander's hoarse cry, looked as if _he_ could have been the leader of the Scouting Legion.

Armin, whose penetrating blue eyes could recall every moment and every detail.

Armin, who knew who Annie was with a single gaze.

Armin, who could simply look into Bertholdt's face and _know_.

And Bertholdt didn't know whether to hate him or thank him. The first because his heart was so anguished, and the second because _he knew she was alive_.

He imagined a dank, dark cell, blood and screams, her screams.

But he'd never heard Annie scream, for she was cold as ice, the glacier queen. He had never seen fear in her stoic expression, in her chilly cyan eyes. He recalled the odd sense of reassurance she gave him, holding his hand and running from the titan, the titan that ate Berik.

And they were exactly like the eyes of the little black cat, sitting on the porch, waiting for them to come home.

* * *

And maybe, they would.

Someday.

* * *

/chapter

Bertholdt, bby.

Anyway. I didn't know how to do this one.

But it came across eventually.

Kind of. lol.


	13. blue

This one is kind of long, and it got away from me...sort of abstract, I think?

As in, where the heck did this title come from (tell me if you know) and what else happened? It's kind of ambiguous, so it's for you to figure out, I guess.

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK, but can you tell who I ship? (well yes, I ship the titan trio, but these two are adorbs.)**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. blue .xxx_

* * *

It's a quiet night. The moon is half and half, looking as if it cannot decide whether or not to peek farther out or to duck back inside the blanket of stars. The wind is calmer than it has been for a long, long time.

She sits on a porch, an old, creaky porch. The wooden boards have rotted away to her left, and she sits on the only stable patch that has not been soaked by the rain.

Unsurprisingly, she does not flinch when someone practically trips over her in his haste.

No, he is not hasty; he is simply clumsy.

He always has been, and he probably always will be.

But, if anything, when he tries hard enough, he can be as nimble as the cat that is wrapped around her legs, purring a soft hum she thinks might be a song of the times.

Bashfully, he mumbles an apology and sits down, and the cat immediately leaps up into his lap, sniffing at the wrapped bundle in his palms. She notices, without much revelation, that he has long, spindly fingers, just as he has long, gangly limbs, growing far too fast for his height. He's always been tall, but he seems to grow unevenly; it pulls a beguiled little smile to her lips (though she would never let him know).

To her amazement, he unwraps a piece of hard-earned meat, a strip of some unlucky fowl fallen at the tip of his father's unfailing arrow.

The cat laps up the meat almost delicately, primly licking its paws clean when it finishes. The boy says nothing, only glances at here, a sideways glance accompanied by a nervous swallow.

"I won't tell," she says simply.

He looks down at the cat, which purrs gently into his chest.

"Where's Reiner?" he manages to ask, though she knows it's just for the sake of conversation. Obviously, by the stutter in his soft voice and the way his hand fumbles with the oiled kerchief, he wants to say something else.

"Sleeping."

It's late, and their third companion has a tendency to fall asleep the earliest. This one, on the other hand, battles off the waves of fatigue so that he can sneak outside and perhaps sit quietly like this, with her.

Side by side, they are, staring at the moon that is half out and half not. The undecided moon. An indecisive star, awkward and large, standing out from all the minute twinkles of far-away stars beside it.

Like him.

She asks if he has been practicing. He says he has.

She hardly believes him, because if he had practiced, everyone would have known. However, she lets it go and brushes the hair behind her ear. They are hardly ten years old, but it feels like they have lived forever.

He asks the same question in return, and she merely looks over at him. She has, but there's a strange ache within her in saying so.

Because all she does is run away.

* * *

He has long since filled out, with lean but broad shoulders and a height to be reckoned with. He who was once even with Reiner now towers over practically everyone. Still a boy to her, but nonetheless grown. He moves swiftly in his gear; he hardly ever stumbles on land. More nervous than before, but with a stoic face learned from her, she is impressed by his guise.

Sometimes, she feels a bubbling sort of urge in her core, and it bothers her because she just wants to run over and ruffle their hair, to call Reiner and idiot and to make Bertholdt laugh.

But Reiner is too immersed among his "friends" and Bertholdt is too quiet.

She, however, does not have too much of a problem with that.

* * *

So long as they go home together.

* * *

He's sitting outside, without Reiner (who usually perches on the cabin doorsteps with a scratchy pen in his hand and a strip of paper).

Today, Bertholdt is alone, his long legs stretched out and his hands in his lap, contemplative. She walks over and sits beside him, wordlessly — he gives her the sideways glance, the same one.

She asks if he has practiced; he says he has. Top of the class, they are.

He asks the same of her, and she simply lifts her chin because he doesn't need to ask.

"Reiner's inside," he attempts, because if there's one thing he hasn't improved at, it's conversation.

"I know," she replies, and he is genuinely surprised that he has evoked an answer from her.

No one sees them, which surprises them time and time again because Shadis is constantly patrolling and not all the trainees sleep like the dead (like Reiner does).

Regardless, she watches him carefully. He sits cross-legged, folding his long legs beneath himself awkwardly. Staring at his own fingers, long fingers attached to large hands attached to even longer limbs. He has grown into his proportions, she realizes, his characteristic discomfiture is evidently reflected.

He is like the little cat, always waiting for someone.

She can picture the black feline brushing up against him, curling up in his lap. How tiny the cat would be now, compared to him.

They mull over nothing and everything, the sky and the earth, the stars that are not there and the moon that isn't either. But it's simply a cloud, because the moon is actually out, and it's half and half again, even if they can't see it.

Bertholdt stands, like he's going to go back inside, but as soon as he turns he trips.

She watches him catch himself and turn abruptly, and if it weren't for her perfectly trained blankness, she would have laughed. (No, she tells herself, it's not quite perfect.)

He sits back down, and though it's dark and she can't quite see his face clearly, she knows his cheeks are red and ruddy and he's embarrassed past words. They don't need words, though, and he as he pulls his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around himself, she finds him far too endearing to look at.

If she stares too long, it gets harder to turn away.

And she doesn't want to be Bertholdt; constantly staring away with a nervous sweat on his brow.

Inwardly, she smiles.

"Your eyes glow," he says out of the blue. She turns, and he continues, "like the cat."

She sincerely wonders if she should smile — though that would probably terrify him, because she hardly ever smiles — but decides against it.

"Really," she replies flatly. She fondly remembers their hometown, with Reiner the oaf and Bertholdt the awkard.

He nods, before letting his eyes wander back up to the cloudy, ambiguous sky.

"The moon's not out tonight," he says. Since when has Bertholdt spoken so much? She wants to laugh, and perhaps it would be a good thing, because his eyes would widen like saucers and his mouth would form an amusing little gape, and that made it all the better.

"No, it's not." She graces him with a reply, finding it charming that he is so easily pleased.

"I wonder where's it's gone."

And it strikes her then, where the moon has gone.

It's behind the clouds, obviously, but at the same time, it is not.

* * *

It is glowing cerulean, down on earth. Bertholdt casts a wary glance her way, and the soft glint in his eyes tells her so many things, yet nothing all at once. There is longing and nostalgia in those eyes, because he remembers the nights on his porch, petting the mysterious black cat from the forest. There is no cat now, only her.

And, Annie realizes, there is no moon.

Only her.

* * *

She is the moon, the indecisive moon, half and half, cautious and apprehensive. Unsure of whether to peek out and smile or to slide back into the darkness.

"The moon has gone home," she answers. _Just like we will_.

He looks at her fully now, curious, intrigued.

She says nothing more after that.

* * *

The wind is calmer than it has been for a long, long time.

* * *

It is a quiet night.

* * *

/chapter

Sorry if there's any out of character-ness in this...haha.

Did you figure anything out?

Tell me! :D


	14. broken

uh still procrastinating lol

**Disclaimer: not mine not mine not mine **

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. broken .xxx_

* * *

The dining hall is impossibly loud and impossibly busy, because if Connie isn't bumping into him, then Eren is starting a fight, and if Eren isn't starting a fight, then Jean is causing a ruckus. If Jean isn't causing a ruckus, then it's because Marco is holding him back and Sasha is stealing all the food and is that Bertholdt cowering silently in the corner?

Oh, and Annie looks like she's going to kill someone, but she doesn't, because she hates it when it gets too crowded, and usually slips away.

Interestingly enough, none of that happens.

It's a rather docile afternoon; lunch has just wrapped up, and Jean actually does the dishes like he's supposed to.

He attempts to yell at Connie, who runs incredibly fast as he collects dirty plates, weaving in and out of the table aisles as if he's got wings on his feet. He does manage, however, to scold Sasha for stealing someone's bread — who in their right mind would leave a piece of bread out? — but Mikasa stuffs the loaf into her mouth just to torture the poor mountain girl.

Eventually, they tire of cleaning up, though Shadis is on their tails within seconds, and upon finishing a majority of the cleaning, it must've been Thomas or Dazz that just gave up and left the building, everyone else trailing behind them eagerly.

It's the laughter that gets to him, really.

In their own little world, they are, because Reiner remembers nothing except that he's wrapping his strong arms around Eren and Connie and they wrestle each other until they get outside, and one of them breaks into a run and suddenly it's a game, a game before training. Even if it's only tag or hide and seek, children's games and foolish play, each and every one of them enjoys — sincerely or not — the rare moments of false peace and happiness.

Because Mina is actually good at this game, and Dazz is hilarious to watch, and Marco is surprisingly devious. It doesn't matter whether or not Dazz is freaking out or Mina is catching everyone, or if Marco finds you in hide-and-seek but purposely whispers that he hasn't seen a thing just so he can find Jean and make the poor horse-face despair in his ineptness at hide-and-seek.

It only matters that people are smiling, and that's what gets him.

Every single time.

He notices today, though, when Bertholdt and Annie do not leave the kitchen. Firstly, because the entire trainee group has left the rest of the dishes to the two of them — and Bertholdt honestly feels obligated to finish them, and Annie just keeps company because she holds a high disdain for crowds and group activities — and secondly because there is a loud crash and the breaking of a plate.

Reiner catches a glimpse of shattering china, and the thin shards that scrabble across the floorboards. Breaking, broken.

Confusion.

Breaking, broken, confusion.

It's the laughter that gets him, and he's trying to decide whether he should haul Connie over to the water spout and douse him or try to figure out why a broken plate pulls his chest taught with anguish.

_Why is it painful?_

Reiner, who pieces himself back together, who cuts himself with the shards of himself and doesn't correctly remember which piece goes where. And he's missing a part, a vital chunk, and he doesn't know because it's the laughter and the smiles and the people that get to him.

So he pushes Connie's head under the spigot and lets the water splash across the smaller boy's head, gurgling laughter and resonating giggles rushing to his ears.

He is lauded for his ability to make people laugh; even the haughty Jean cracks a smile, and the cold Mikasa's eyes soften.

_Why_?

Because Reiner doesn't need that piece of himself, the missing part, the slab of life he can't remember.

As he scoops up Armin and tosses the spindly little boy in the air — as Eren shouts and Mikasa tries to grab the skinny blond from Reiner's grasp — he knows that he can't remember, but he doesn't care.

The two inside, sweeping up the broken glass, will remember for him.

* * *

They'll hold onto his missing piece until he is ready for it.

* * *

/chapter

I wanted to include more 104th trainees.

I have massive Marco feels.

Can you imagine if Marco titan existed and when he approached Jean he just laid down, rolled over, and started purring and doing this _rrrururuuuurrrr rrrrururu _sound until Jean pet him?!


	15. run

My chapters are getting worse and worse I'm sorry, it's because I have nothing to do.

Actually, I need to do homework, but I want to procrastinate - AND THUS, THIS JUNK COMES FORTH.

Sorry this one isn't as great.

Tell me what you think.

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK because I'm a procrastinating student who should write her essays.**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. run .xxx_

* * *

"It's definitely going to be cloudy."

"No, sunny."

"That looks like rain to me."

"Last time it rained, he slept upright."

"He is upright."

"No, his face is smashed into the wall."

"That means it'll be cloudy."

"Nah, it's definitely—"

Typically, he found these arguments to be amusing. Typically, he woke up more or less groggily, to the sound of Jean and Eren and Connie debating how, when, and where he fell asleep. Typically, he didn't have this leaden weight in his gut, but today was not typical, and he dreaded the next step.

"It'll be sunny," Eren repeated, with such conviction that the other two went silent for a few second before reentering their argumentative phase.

"Cloudy," said Connie.

"Tornado," Millius called from across the cabin.

"Earthquake," Dazz shouted.

_They're all wrong_, Bertholdt wanted to tell them, because who could he tell? He hoped that Reiner remembered, because the last thing he remembered of the muscular blond was that he'd headed outside wordlessly.

They had graduated; they were full-fletched soldiers now.

And as Eren and countless others rode up the side of the wall, he watched them go with an apprehensive swallow. Reiner was not up there. Annie was not up there.

Someone touched his arm; she immediately slipped into the busy crowd, and he could not follow.

He followed Mina and Dazz, but discreetly hopped onto a supplies elevator, waiting for the pulley to begin reeling him up the massive wall.

_Don't wait, okay? _Reiner had told him. _Just like we did five years ago._

* * *

He dreams of falling, of being crushed, of being eaten.

Nightmares fill his empty sleep, but he hides in a hollow corner of his mind, waiting for the images to go away. He sees his friends dying, he sees himself in a dungeon.

He sees someone flying down from behind Reiner and cutting through his neck like it's made of air.

He sees Annie falling to her knees as a soldier stabs her through.

He sees so many people, and then he sees none.

* * *

He found it unnerving that the first thing he saw, as his vision cleared and the steam dispersed, was Eren's back. And then their faces, all their faces, terrified of _him_.

And then the seconds were ticking down, and though Eren couldn't make it to his neck in time, he was slow, so slow.

Suddenly he was falling in his gear; he shot a hook and flew towards the wall. He swung through the very hole he'd just kicked in, and he ran for his life.

No one ever saw Annie run in and wrench herself from her titan form.

No one ever saw Reiner grab both of their arms and duck into an empty cart.

No one saw the horses pulling them away, pulling far, far away onto a lonely rooftop where they watched their own work unfold.

* * *

He reads over Reiner's poem with a strange frown.

But he says nothing.

It is the night of their graduation; it has been three years since they began.

It's been five years since the fall of Maria.

And it's 24 hours until the fall of the next.

* * *

/chapter

I just wanted to write about them predicting weather again, okay?!

I didn't know what to write.

Difficulty in order of most to least: writing Reiner, then Bertl, then Annie.

GAHHHH.

Usually it's Reiner, but Bertl was really hard this time...

Blughhhhh.


	16. regret

NEED TO STUDY CALC

NEED TO STUDY

**Disclaimer: uh uh I have a stomachache WAIT I mean SnK is not mine**

**NOTE: kudos to ****Xeno the Hedgehog **** for actually PREDICTING WHAT I WAS GOING TO WRITE NEXT. How crazy is that? :D **

**I had written half of this, and then I got this message, and my eyes bulged out so far I was afraid they'd pop out and fly away lol.**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. regret .xxx_

* * *

The air is a thick, noxious veil of titan blood and torn flesh. She narrowly avoids death by the hands of a hungry giant, one that ducks around the evaporating carcass the others were currently sinking their foul teeth into. While the trees provide good cover and her bumbling pursuer cannot catch up with her acceleration, there is no hesitation in her departure.

She cannot spare even a _hello_ for her two "friends", for such a move would be the end of them all.

But it certainly isn't pleasant, shooting through the forest of giant trees; the moans of ghosts howl at her back, and she passes bodies that she had smashed into the unforgiving oak trunks with her own hands. There is nothing celebratory about the smashed soldier sent to death by her shoulder, nor is there anything to feel accomplished of upon seeing a man she had tossed over her shoulder, maneuvering wires reeling him in like a sickeningly bloody toy.

She doesn't want to remember these things, this nightmare that happened just prior. The thought of a spear in her eye and a titan chewing on her leg flashes through her consciousness every now and then, and she forces the bile back down her throat and tells herself it was not terrifying.

She refuses to acknowledge her fear.

But she does, however, feel regret.

Simple, true regret.

* * *

The man's voice startles her into action; the ability to react in the following split-second has been the key to her survival thus far.

She draws her blades so quickly that he hardly has time to open his mouth again before she has sliced through his neck like she would a titan, and he hangs limply from a tree. A grisly human ornament, strung from a branch.

This time, the blood doesn't disappear from her blades, and the metallic tang of nausea pushes her stomach into her mouth.

But if only he hadn't called out, she wouldn't have so many more regrets.

She hadn't _wanted_ to knock Armin off his horse.

She hadn't _wanted _to take that man by his gear and throw him around and around like a lasso.

She hadn't _wanted_ to run over that girl, and she hadn't _wanted_ to kick her squad leader into the gates of hell.

She didn't.

She doesn't.

She won't.

But she will.

Fatigued but holding firm to her last bit of stamina, she nicks her thumb with her pointed ring, and waits for the overwhelming sensation of being engulfed to come. Eventually, she loses control of her real body — struggling within the layers of tendons and ligaments was a fruitless effort — and instead she feels hardened, bony limbs made of pure muscle and impossibility.

She begins to wonder what they feel, what this one feels when she heavily smashes him to the ground, what this woman feels when she is brutally crushed into a tree — through her long, deft titan fingers, she is horrified to find that she can feel the gruesome _crack_ of the woman's neck — and if the last one to follow loved her, because the look on his face wrenches at her heart.

But her heart is trapped inside a cold case of stone, in her titan body, and there is no escaping it.

She imagines herself, thrown to her death and blown to pieces; she imagines herself, half-eaten like Marco, chewed up like Mina.

And then she imagines the faces of Reiner and Bertholdt, and the dungeon of ice around her soul shivers. A creak and a whine, like old creaky gates, and in that moment of weakness, she is unaware of her surroundings.

Until the vengeful scream pierces the air and suddenly there is a hateful titan next to her, swinging wildly with his uncontrolled fists, screeching hysterically because he has gone completely and utterly mad.

She doesn't know if she would apologize to Eren, because she hasn't even apologized to herself.

She turns her head away from him when he screams, because the cry is so full of agony and sorrow and confusion and torment that she doesn't want them to seep into her. Nonetheless, this isn't the place to be defeated, and she instinctively tears herself free from his ungainly grasp.

Her fists are raised.

His titan eyes reflect something between astonishment and horror, recognition and disbelief.

She strikes his head off with one blow.

* * *

For some reason, she has a feeling she won't make it out of the forest with Eren. She feels this notion dwelling on her chest as she runs, elbowing branches out of her way and frequently having to dodge Mikasa's desperate assaults. Her titan body doesn't breathe; she is suffocating inside, the heat scorching her skin and her titan flesh tugging at her limbs.

She has Eren in her jaws, but she knows she won't reach the edge of the forest in time. A feeble fight, is what she considers her following effort.

But, she concludes, if there's anything to show she has a heart, it is that she'll let this man have some sort of closure.

She falls.

Eren is gone, in the arms of humanity's strongest.

She sits, bewitched by the miraculously cold steam that is rising from her sliced arms and legs. At least, to her, it is so hot that it stings like ice, like a feverish chill she cannot get rid of.

She feels the cold seep down her cheek, her titan cheek — a tear.

And she regrets, and regrets, and regrets because she is a murderer. She's no better than the titan that ate Berik, and certainly no different from some lunatic in the city who slashes the throats of sleeping people at night. She has killed and taken and destroyed. The world is dark, and the black mass of hatred that bubbles from her life tucks itself around her shoulders, a pair of uncomfortable hands of comfort.

She has failed.

She will wake up tomorrow morning, only to pretend like nothing happened, but she'll know what Reiner and Bertholdt are thinking. What she is thinking.

_Will we ever go home?_

And this, this was her fault.

She recalls each and every face as she sends them to their graves, their crimson tombs seeping with tears and terror, among the trees and the earth and the sky.

She regrets.

* * *

Annie weeps.

* * *

/chapter

Annie is fun to write

but I must study

and I feel awful

so goodbye for now :D


	17. hopeful

guh this is because I'm hungry too

**Disclaimer: SnK is not mine. But I ****_do_**** worship freckled jesus.**

**Note: tumblr's muns are trolling me O.o**

**Note 2: foood.**

**Note 3: more foooood.**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. hopeful .xxx_

* * *

The bread is stale, but he can't complain. He shuffles to the dimly lit tavern, an old, shabby place with creaking boards and a once-filled liquor cabinet. Now, it stands out, the wooden frames stark and lonely within the shop. There's an old man wiping down the dishes, and he casts them a sad glance before looking away.

"Tomorrow, let's try the next town in," he suggests.

Bertholdt offers a dubious shrug, gnawing skeptically on his rock of a bread roll.

"Maybe we'll run into Annie."

Bertholdt shrugs again, and Reiner supposes that he won't be getting any answers out of the taller boy any time soon. Ever since Annie scooped them up on her shoulders and ran for an eternity until they reached a ferry station — where they'd slipped amongst the frantic passengers with startling ease — Bertholdt had been deadly quiet.

Now, with a meek nibble on his hardly edible bread, Bertholdt sits himself down on an empty barstool and swings his legs back and forth, pensive.

"Hey," calls Reiner. "Tomorrow we'll look for her, okay?"

No response; not that he expects one from the dark-haired, brooding Bertholdt. Sighing, Reiner plops himself unceremoniously beside his companion, disinterestedly picking at his roll. They sit there in affable silence, neither saying a word to the other, each to their own meticulous chewing — they complain of sore jaws, Bertholdt as he rubs his face gently, and Reiner by his consistently loud whines — and thinking.

True to his word, Reiner takes the lead and the next day, they're meandering to the next town, stocked up with a grand total of three rolls of bread and a slab of old cheese a kind old woman was generous enough to offer them.

"This would be so much faster with Annie," Reiner states bluntly.

Bertholdt casts him an exasperated glance.

"I know, that's why we're looking for Annie."

Bertholdt shakes his head.

Reiner shrugs, slinging their insufficient pack fashioned out of a scrapped strip of tarp over his shoulder. They walk for a day and a night, and then maybe some more, because neither can remember.

Eventually, Bertholdt starts talking, if only to ease the boredom and keep both of them from going insane. After all, it takes Reiner fifty-two children's songs strung on endless repeat for Bertholdt to hoarsely join in and add the parts that his stocky blond friend doesn't remember.

They eat the cheese before it goes bad, and even though it leaves a dank, sticky feeling in their mouths, its sustenance, and they're trudging down the worn path with one and a half rolls left and twenty-four more songs to sing.

It's only luck that they find Annie a town and a farm later, chewing on a similarly hard chunk of bread, faring twenty times better than they could have ever hoped to.

* * *

The raunchy punch lines and offensive jabs are not what endear Connie to Reiner. It's the boy's relatively easygoing personality that catches the muscular blond by surprise, and he watches the exchange between resident joker and infamous potato girl with mild amusement. He realizes, with a wry smile, that his fellow trainees have truly grown on him.

"Reiner, you're on dish duty today," is what Millius tells him, and he graciously accepts because dish duty is practically equivalent with a soapsuds battle. Reiner knows very well that Eren and Jean are two worthy opponents in the battlefield that is the sink and kitchen.

But even before that, Reiner sits himself down for lunch, his stomach growling at the very sight of Eren spooning soup into his mouth and Mikasa downing a loaf of bread before Sasha can even dream of reaching it.

He recalls being delighted by the fact that the camp bread was considerably less rock-like than the type of baked earth he'd lived on for the past few years. Bertholdt, who hardly ever says a thing, actually exclaims, "It's good!" to himself upon eating the bread. (Across the room, Reiner catches Annie's eye, but the petite girl simply shoots him a glare that makes him appreciate the fact that they'd found her, but yet dread ever making eye contact again).

Morning arrives with, more often than not, Bertholdt hanging halfway off his upper bunk and maybe Armin wailing because the poor soul is being teased again. Reiner pushes his way out the door first, dressed and ready, and trots down to the dining hall. He has to look twice, because there's Bertholdt, sitting quietly at the table, sipping a cup of something.

"I thought you were still in your bunk," Reiner begins, but is cut off by a pair of fingers pinching arm so hard he yelps pathetically.

He looks down.

"Anni—"

She shoves a cup of that something into his hands, and he almost drops the mug in his surprise.

"—nnie?"

He thinks he must be dreaming, because how could Bertholdt teleport and since when did Annie ever interact with him and _is that apple cider_?

How in the world Annie obtained a precious, rare export of produce is beyond him. He hasn't seen an apple, let alone apple cider since he was seven, and even then, his father and Bertholdt's father had taken off on a life-or-death mission to the only fruit orchard they knew of. To say the least, Reiner saw his uncle come back with a leg almost bitten off, and was horrified into crying that he never wanted apple cider again if it meant that his family might lose their arms and legs and even their heads.

But there it is, right in his hands, and Reiner takes a tentative sip.

It's warm and sweet and tangy and _perfect_, and it's got the kick of spice he likes at the end, the subtlety of taste from their hometown; the one that Annie, of course, knows well.

"Thanks, Annie!"

Expectedly, she ignores him and shoulders her way past the incoming recruits, to disappear toward the other side of the hall and settle next to Mina. But Reiner doesn't mind, because the cider is soothing on his tongue and throat, yet also flavorful and zesty, and he savors the drink like it's the fountain of youth.

"It's good," Bertholdt murmurs, and this time it's Reiner that doesn't say a thing, only nodding in blissful agreement.

But the moment is ruined by Connie and Sasha, who ask what it is they're drinking, and when Sasha's impeccably sharp nose catches a whiff of _precious apple_, they're on the two titan-shifters' tails like mad hounds, and Reiner has a split second to down the rest of his cider in one gallant swig — albeit a good one — before running for his life.

Again, Bertholdt does his magic, and he's gone like a ghost; to Reiner's dismay, the tall, stoic Fubar has left him to his own devices, which include running away from the insanely fast combo of idiots nearly stepping on his heels.

It's troublesome, but he wouldn't have it any other way.

* * *

Oddly enough, Reiner doesn't long for the decent mushroom soup that Shadis dishes out, or even the savory apple cider he wishes he had more time to appreciate — instead, he's perched in a tree wistfully thinking of hard bread rolls, the kind he can chew on for hours and hours and pretend that the stomach has been filled because he's been crunching on its inhospitable crust for the past hour or so.

He almost wishes nothing would happen for the moment; a good hour of rest would do him wonders. But as he considers sitting down for a moment, he knows it's not to be, because the next thing he knows, he's flinging titans at the Scouting Legion, and his stomach is as empty as his heart.

* * *

But, at least, he figures he might find an apple orchard on the way home.

_Optimistic, _this one is.

* * *

/chapter

Annie headcanon: she's a good chef.


	18. illusion

_Remembering that fateful day: 9/11._

* * *

**Disclaimer: not mine not mine not mine snk is not mine**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. illusion .xxx_

* * *

The day that Annie breaks is the day that frightens him the most. It's half past noon when she comes up to him, wordlessly grabbing his arm. Startled, he freezes up and simply watches her, eyes fixated on her thin, long fingers wrapped around his worn sleeve. Offhandedly, he begins to debate whether or not he should get a new sweater, another navy one like this because he likes it, because the one he's wearing now has threads falling every which way, and if he just so happens to catch himself on a devious tree branch, the whole thing might unravel to shreds.

But _now isn't the time_, Bertholdt reminds himself, because he cannot fathom why in the world Annie has grabbed his arm.

Fortunately for Bertholdt, the petite blonde lets go and walks away as if nothing happens.

But he knows, and she knows.

Something did.

* * *

It's past curfew when Bertholdt finds her again — a mistake, really, because how would he know that taking the shortcut through the hole in the fence that he can't fit through would lead him straight to the strangling copse of trees where lo and behold, Annie is curled up? — and her next few words scares his very heart from his chest.

"Bertholdt, _I need your help_."

Hardly a whisper, but he hears it all the same. He kneels.

"A-Annie?"

"Run away," she murmurs. "Run away from here with me."

"Annie, you're making no sense. Have you talked to Reine—"

But she's gripping his arm again, but her nails bite into exposed skin and she is seething rage and utter despair both at the same time. Her shoulders curl in fisted rage, but her head drops like someone who has lost everything.

"Get up, Annie, we'll get in trouble," Bertholdt begs, because that's just his tone and he's desperately afraid that Shadis will make them do much more than just run till they drop if they're discovered out after curfew. "Anni—"

"Bertholdt. I can't."

_Annie, you don't say I can't_.

Bertholdt looks down at his hands, a frown settling upon his features.

"Are you listening? If you don't come with, I'll take Reiner with me."

_Annie, you can't just run away._

"I'll take Reiner, and we'll leave you here. Alone. We'll go home without you." The look on Annie's face terrifies him, because there is such conviction in her set jaw and piercing blue eyes that he's shaken to the core.

_N-no, Annie, don't leave me!_

"Are you even listening, Bertholdt? Do you _ever_ listen?" There's an annoyed frown, and it's the kind he's seen for years and years but _he can't move_ and _he can't reply_, because all the words coming from his mouth float into the air, translated into the language of silence and fear.

"It's your choice."

* * *

He's floating so high, so high, above the walls and above the world.

* * *

But he's heavy as lead, and he knows how it feels to fall forever.

* * *

"We're leaving without you."

And he's pounding at the wall, the clear glass wall of a substance he does not recognize, because he can only see Reiner and Annie walking away, their backs to him, leaving him, _abandoning him_.

He sees Annie draw blood from her thumb, and she scoops up Reiner with a graceful ease, and they're running home.

Without him.

* * *

He is frozen in time, frozen in space, frozen in his own blood and sweat and tears.

He is frozen because he can't do anything without Reiner.

He is frozen because he knows, most of all, that it's just the opposite of what they're saying. They haven't left Bertholdt behind.

It is Bertholdt who has left Annie behind.

* * *

She screams, and he cries.

* * *

_I'll come back for you._

* * *

_ I'll kill you all!_

* * *

_ I didn't want to leave you, Annie. We're going home together, I promise. That's why…please don't leave, not now._

"It's past curfew, Bertholdt. If you won't go, I'm not waiting. I'm not holding my breath for you." She stands, but her face is streaked with frantic tears. Her shoulders shake as she picks her way through the shrubbery, the soles of her boots cracking the fallen branches. Each snap is a tremendous crash in his ears, and he watches her go, he watches….

A hand claps on his shoulder, and the last thing he remembers is Annie sparing him a sad, sad glance over her shoulder, mouthing words that he can't hear, or can't remember hearing.

The hand drags him into the dark.

* * *

_He awoke with a start, his brow damp with sweat, his breath harried and short. His heart thundered within his chest, but he stared blankly at the ceiling without comprehending a thing. A weak beam of not-light wandered through the crack in the curtains; it was early, and no one was up yet._

_ He grasped the side of his bunk, leaning over to check on the snoring soul comfortably rolled up beneath him. A shuddering breath of relief racked his entire being upon seeing that Reiner remained in his bunk, curled up in his usual position with the pillow smothering half his face._

_ Deeming it useless to attempt another goose chase with the spirits of sleep, Bertholdt clambered down effortlessly from the high mattress, simply swinging down and landing softly on the cabin floorboards. He was hardly surprised to find Marco already up, sitting by a window and writing in a personal journal — no, he was writing his monthly letters to home — and smiling amiably when he passed. It was no surprise that Thomas was up; his farmer's hours woke him up at the crack of dawn upon the call of an imaginary rooster. _

_ Similarly, Bertholdt ran a friendly hello to Sasha, who had the habit of staking out a post on the boy's side of the lodgings, perched upon a strong branch halfway up a tree. She cast an analytic glance at the horizon, and told him it would be a rainy day. Bertholdt learned from experience to trust Sasha's forecasting rather than go off of what the boys gleaned from his bizarre sleeping positions._

_ He was not surprised when, at the break of true dawn, a strong patter of rain began to fall. _

_ He _was_ stunned, however, when he found Annie sitting on one of the fences, staring off into the distance._

_ In that moment, he could not recall if _last night_ had been a dream or not. A dream, it must be, he decided, because Annie wouldn't cry. She was the true warrior out of the three, and her heart had turned to stone every since they left her father._

_ "Annie," he began, a surge of flutters coursing through his veins because his mouth worked and his vocal chords sounded and he could _move_._

_ But she doesn't answer. Simply hopping off the top rail, she walked alongside the fence before breaking away, joining the groggy masses of trainees slogging through the accumulating mud._

_ He thought, grimly, of what she had told him in his dream. The little rivulets of rainwater eroded tiny paths around his shoes. He wondered if by trying hard enough, he, too, could chip away at her closed heart until the ice fell through and he could embrace her truly, to jostle her from her inert coma in which the capacity to love laid in the hands of a greedy witch of fate and circumstance. _

_ But instead, he was met with a hearty laugh and a clap on his shoulder, because here came Reiner and company. Here came the overly enthusiastic Connie, the willful Eren, the ever condescending Jean and his thin-lipped smirk. Here came little Christa, an angel soaked by the rain, and here came Mina, a bundle of smiles that simply couldn't contain itself with sheer willpower alone. And Marco, Dazz, Millius. Ymir, Mikasa, Hannah._

_ But he just wanted to sob because, no matter how many approached them, everyone was not Annie, and Annie was not anyone._

* * *

She looks at him one last time, and he realizes that he _does_ hear her words:

"I love you."

* * *

_But, he realized, with a choked laugh and a self-pitying sob, it was only a dream._

_ And to think that his dream could hold truth was simply living an illusion._

_ Within the illusions laid the truth, and within the truth were the lies._

_ However, Bertholdt's pain was so real, so tangible, that he knew without a doubt that he lived in the cruel, harsh plane of reality._

* * *

It's a dream because she will never love him, and he knows it through and through.

* * *

_ He didn't need hopes or dreams, illusions or fears._

_ Because reality alone was enough to break him._

* * *

/chapter

*insert massive BertlAnnie feels here*

(wanted to try a dream scene)


	19. reality

Tried something different!

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK, nor do I only swim free!**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. reality .xxx_

* * *

To say the least, she feels something close to fear when they catch her. A thousand and one spears have crossed through her; she feels them, yet she does not. There is pain everywhere, yet she hardly feels a thing. A man stands on her head, yet she feels that if she just simply leaned back, she could see him from behind.

But honestly, it's not quite fear. Not yet.

Not when there are titans bordering the forest and she is simply dinner and a palette cleanser — the latter only if they catch her — and she intends on becoming neither. She has planned this, no, _they _have planned this, for months in advance. For years, and years, and years. Three years is eternity, but they strike her as important.

_Importance_.

Failure is unfathomable, and so she runs.

* * *

She is kneeling on the bunk she has inhabited for the past three years, listening to Mina's excited rambling drone on past her capacity for bothering to listen. The other girl is perched on the edge of a pulled up stool, incredibly enthused about their recent graduation.

"We're going to kill real titans and become heroes," she claims bravely. "We're going to take down the Colossal Titan."

Annie finds it ironic that the person who knocks on the door is Bertholdt, looking for Reiner (though Annie knows better because their third companion has long since learned to stay away from the girls' lodge).

* * *

There's no face on this person, but she has a feeling that it's a person who used to smile, and that it can only be Mina.

She whispers her apology, because Mina was kindhearted.

Mina was "a friend".

* * *

She would like to say she felt nothing when she wordlessly drifted with the crowd, the majority of new soldiers that didn't want to risk their lives with the Scouting Legion. No, it was hardly pity for the fools who fought between rooting themselves to the spot and flying away like the cowards they were. It wasn't sympathy for the fearful humans who took the easy way out and found a safety cove in the Military Police or a miserable in-between among the Garrison troops.

Annie would be lying if she said that the helpless look that Bertholdt threw over his shoulder — careless, he was, slapping something so blatantly hurtful in her face — did not affect her.

But she doesn't care.

She _doesn't care_.

At least, it's the mantra she endlessly chants until she falls asleep in the simple bunks, her few items packed — useless things, really — for her departure into Sina the next day.

But she does care, and her sleep is fitful and far from the peace she assumed would come with "saving her own hide".

* * *

Regrettably, Hitch is far from Mina, and will never be Mina. Annie finds that this haughty airhead of a girl is nothing but a doll.

She breaks the necks of dolls like toothpicks; she's never liked playing with dolls, and so the day she mercilessly tosses the doll her aunt gives to her for her birthday, a rather concerned Reiner picks it back up, wipes the soot from its horrendously pink cheeks, and offers it back to her.

The doll is one of the useless items in Annie's bag.

But nonetheless, Annie finds herself irked by Hitch's very voice. When another young soldier, tired of the brunette's constant taunting, exasperatedly begs her to stop, Annie is relieved.

Not that the great Hitch ever stops, of course.

But Annie has seen combat, and that simply puts her above Hitch. She cannot understand, however, why she feels such competitiveness. That is not her purpose, nor is it her desire. Instead, she shows her appreciation for Hitch's arrogance by speaking with silence and ignoring the airhead with all her might.

If it takes a Colossal Titan to knock down that girl's confidence, then so be it. Annie is perfectly capable of obtaining such a weapon, after all.

And, she supposes, Mina would not like Hitch either.

* * *

There is a day when another girl caught wind of a rumor about Hitch, one that involved inappropriate conduct with superiors that gained her position as top ten.

Inexplicably, Annie is overwhelmingly pleased.

* * *

There is also a day, however, when Hitch catches sight of Annie's precious — though filled with useless items — bag. The brunette grabs the doll and the few other things and triumphantly parades them into the hall.

There are clothes — useless clothes — and a few rations — bread that somehow lasts an eternity, despite eventually becoming petrified and solid — just in case, but what Hitch pulls out are the most important:

The doll and the bracelet.

"Oh, Annie, I didn't know you still played with _dolls_," shrieks the girl, dancing just out of the blonde's reach. "And who's this bracelet from? It sure is _pretty_? Does Annie _like_ someone?"

The boys are wise to cower, and the girls know better than to interfere, because Annie's next move sends Hitch to the infirmary unconscious.

Was it a lesson learned?

Hardly.

* * *

It's approximately midnight, and Annie fingers the trinket that Hitch so gladly mocked her for. It was a yet another thing of hers that held the brief yet apparent memory of someone, a person that manifested himself in her mind as soon as her fingers touched the clasp of the bracelet.

This one was from her mother. She never took it off, really, when she was younger. The day she lost it was the day the fearless Annie cried, and she would not be soothed by anyone, not even her father. She blamed herself endlessly for losing her precious bracelet, and when Bertholdt pled for her to stop crying, she wanted to smack his ridiculous face so hard that he ended up shorter than her.

That is, until he almost began to cry too, shoving the bracelet into her fingers and quickly exclaiming that she'd dropped it a little while back.

Her aunt's doll — Reiner's kind insistence — and her mother's bracelet — Bertholdt's compassion.

The next time Hitch decides to mess with her valued memories, Annie will make sure that that haughty, blown-up ego of hers will never recover. If she ever needs any form of support, Mina is there. Annie has discovered the recently deceased to be the greatest form of unwavering faith.

That is, because what is left of Mina is Annie's imagination.

Her own illusions won't fall, even to Hitch.

Annie finds it amusing, however, that the day she finds Armin, she had debated whether or not to just eat Hitch and be rid of the filth in one fell swoop.

* * *

She regrets, however, leaving her bag under her pillow the day they catch her; she hides within her heart of crystal, hoping that one day she'll get them back.

* * *

/chapter

headcanons galore!

and thus the items are never seen.

and

Annie falls.

I NEED TO DO HOMEWORK AND SLEEP GOSH DANG IT.


	20. escape

Idk this one was hard?

;\

**Disclaimer: SnK is not mine, but did you see Annie this week she was so cuteeeeee**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. escape .xxx_

* * *

The rain pelted at his thin cloak relentlessly, but he couldn't afford to slow down. His hands were frozen stiff; he shoved them underneath his armpits in an attempt to thaw his icy fingers as he ran on. He'd long since passed many fellow trainees, slogging through the mud and collapsing in the sleet. There were probably only a few that could keep pace with him, and a rare one or two that surged ahead.

He soon passed Eren, who doggedly fought to keep his head up, even though his assiduous attempts at freeing himself from the knee-high mud landed him deeper and deeper. Feeling a tad bit of graciousness, Reiner paused and offered a hand. Eren hissed, debating whether or not he would accept the help, but ended up grasping Reiner's hand before he slipped further into the hungry mire.

Reiner ran on, leaving a drenched and exhausted — albeit determined — Eren Jaeger behind, making sure to avoid the deep pools and slippery rivers that the rain had made in the path. Perhaps it was because he'd stopped to help so many trainees along the way that he'd fallen way behind, but as soon as he could make out the bobbing heads of what must've been Annie and Bertholdt — who else would make such a dynamically contrasting height duo? — Reiner picked up his feet and elatedly trotted up to them.

"H-how much longer to the next checkpoint?" he panted, falling in stride with the other two. Annie very bluntly ignored him — not that he expected much more — and Bertholdt's silence grew unnerving after about five seconds. "Guys?"

Rainwater splashed beneath his boots, one of which he swore had a hole in the inner sole, and the suctioning slop beneath his heels grudgingly allowed him to pull away. It wasn't until they reached the small, dimly lit cabin that Bertholdt said:

"We can't stop now."

So, as the storm raged on and his limbs grew weak from fatigue, Reiner ran. Never once did he fall a single step behind Annie and Bertholdt.

But, it seemed, they wouldn't have left him behind anyway.

He didn't quite remember making it to the final checkpoint, but he was there nonetheless, his arm slung over someone's shoulder, and someone else gripping his sleeve tightly.

"Wake up, Reiner."

* * *

He had no strength left, yet he ran on. This time, the earth was hard-packed and dry, the grass prickling the soles of his immense feet. He covered miles within a dozen strides, and the birds dove away from his flying figure. But, as he carried them farther and farther away, he couldn't help shake the guilt that clung to his shoulders.

He'd left someone behind.

* * *

The sun streams through his window, and he can't help but admire the flickering shadows of tree branches on the floorboards.

Someone knocks on the windowpane; it's Bertholdt.

And then suddenly, there's a little boy and a little girl grabbing his hands, and they're running into a field of grass taller than even Bertholdt, and they're not stopping, not any time soon.

At least, that's what it seems like, if only Bertholdt was not crying into his hands and Annie was not running in the opposite direction.

* * *

He can't remember the last time they were together, but he never stops.

He'll find them.

* * *

/chapter

sorry if I make no sense lol


	21. promise

And, finally, Annie is the easiest and most enjoyable to right.

Though I do like the challenge of Reiner and Bertl.

**Disclaimer: I don't own Snk, but ****_he's gonna kill'em all cuz he's Eren Jaeger_****.**

**(Danny Phantom op x Eren Jaeger have you hEARD IT oMG)**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. promise .xxx_

* * *

There are so many lies that she just wants to swing the rifle onto her shoulder and shoot.

But she can't. And she won't.

Instead, she puts the weapon down — what good would it do her, anyway? — and slides the ring onto her finger. She vaguely tries to recall what else she is leaving behind, but at the moment it's not the first thing on her mind. Eren and Mikasa appear around a corner, in matching cloaks, and all she can think of is their eyes. Their eyes give away everything.

They must be fools to think she is one, too.

Armin, however, Armin is sharp. His eyes are so full of pain and fear and anxiety that she almost believes him.

But she knows, despite this pleas, that he already sees her as a bad person.

There's nothing she can do to change that, not now.

* * *

He doesn't know it, but she hears him. She hears him say,

"Annie, I still don't think you're a bad person."

There is a pause, briefly, and a slow intake of breath. She wishes she could put her hand out to the wall of crystal, but it is wrapped around her, suffocating her. Armin's hand rests gingerly on the surface of her cage, her own trap.

"We're leaving soon," he continues. "But…"

He's got such blue, blue eyes that she wants to shoot them from his head because she cannot bear to look into them, yet she is forced to. But her rifle lays somewhere in the Stohess District, abandoned in an alley, perhaps picked up by someone to sell on the black market. Perhaps picked up by Hitch or Marlow or somebody she is supposed to have known.

"But I never thought of you as a bad person," he says. "Not even at the very end."

He turns, then, because someone else has entered. It's the short man with the angry eyes, the suppressed love that bears down on his shoulders like the weight of the sky. Armin exits, then, but he glances back — and she wishes he hadn't — with his blue, blue eyes, shining cerulean like nothing else in the world can. He says then, so softly she can hardly hear it within her cage of time and hope and despair:

"It's not the end, Annie. Not yet."

* * *

She almost regrets to admit that her heart leaps every time the door opens. She isn't sure what's going on, but she doesn't even care about the fact that it is Reiner in chains and Bertholdt's unmoving body, she just wants company. And she feels horrible, because Reiner hardly ever speaks and she thinks Bertholdt might be dead — her heart hurts, but it is also suspended in the crystal, detached from her soul — and those blue, blue eyes always come in to visit her.

His hair has grown long and he's much, much taller, and much, much wiser. He ties it back with a string and begins his daily ritual, one that involves trading notes with the bespectacled woman and then laying a hand on her glassy enclosure.

_It's the end,_ she wants to say, _and even if you deny it, the beginning of the end has already passed_.

But every day, without fail, he simply strides up to her and says:

"It's time to begin."

* * *

_It's time to begin anew, _he says sometimes.

* * *

Every single moment he is there, her heart creeps closer to her, despite her continued efforts to sever the bonds between her true self and her emotions. She doesn't want her heart back. As soon as it returns to her, the image of a broken Reiner and a dead Bertholdt will kill her, too. It's not what she gambled for, not any of this.

"You're in pain," Armin states rather sadly. "Shall I leave you, today?"

The bespectacled woman sitting aside doesn't question his reasons for talking to a slab of crystallized girl, frozen for all time. She simply annotates her annotated notes, sitting cross-legged on the floor some distance from them.

_Leave_, Annie wants to scream. But simultaneously, her heart cries for him to stay, and she wants a rifle, a blade, a knife. She wants — not for Armin this time, and not for his eyes — to strangle her heart until it croaks for death to come, because she has lost the bet and the pain slips ever closer to her.

She hasn't realized that it's already inside, consuming her.

"There is someone who wishes for you to have one night of peaceful sleep," Armin says. "He thinks endlessly of you, Annie."

_Why do you waste yourself on me? _Annie demands silently, furiously. _Why do you wish for me to be at peace, _why_?_

"Just this once," Armin says, brushing he long, golden wheat hair from his face. He looks truly as brilliant as he is, with a long coat that nearly sweeps the floor with its end, emblazoned proudly with the Scouting Legion's emblem. Never has he been mocking or condescending; simply, he is Armin.

Armin Arlert.

"Just this once," Armin says, "you will sleep peacefully. Promise me that, Annie?"

_Why would I promise you anything?_

"But Annie, this promise isn't for me."

_I won't promise you anything, Armin. I'm not a good person._

"I will leave you to him, then," Armin says.

_You're not making any sense. Aren't you the sensible one? Aren't you—_

"Annie, don't sing yourself lullabies." Armin, who has not removed his hand from the crystal, is distractingly close to her. His eyes, those accursed eyes.

Lullabies are horrid, lullabies are vile. She knows this, because as soon as the word leaves his lips and seeps through to her very core, she can only hear voices chanting and voices singing. _Berik is dead, Berik is dead, the titan ate Berik and Berik is d—_

"I told you not to sing them, Annie. That's hardly a lullaby, anyway."

She just wants Armin to go away.

"I'm simply waiting for you to promise Annie."

_I won't promise you anyth—_

"Then don't promise for me. I'm not requesting it."

_Then—_

"_He_ is granting it to you, so please accept it."

She silences her thoughts for a brief moment.

_And then you'll leave?_

"If that's what you want, Annie."

Her momentary weakness allows her heart to dive back into her soul, and she is suddenly afraid, so afraid of waking up. This is fear, and she has only feared once, and though she vowed never to fear again, it is within her. She doesn't fear death or pain, she doesn't fear fate or destiny.

But still, terror grasps her whole and she cannot possibly escape from a prison created by her own hands.

She promises.

* * *

The window is open, despite the chilly wind that is sweeping through the halls like a vengeful spirit. It is hardly midnight, so she settles back down, lying on the luxurious mattress reserved for the Military Police. She doesn't recall any dreams or ideas or fleeting notions, so she dismisses the reason for waking as a simple noise or disturbance. Otherwise, it is a surprisingly peaceful night.

Something jingles in her hand, and her hands enclose around her beloved mother's bracelet. Her memento. She doesn't recall taking it from her bag before going to bed, but she doesn't put it back.

Fading to sleep once more, she feels as if someone's hands are enclosing hers. It's warm, comforting, soothing, almost as if someone is murmuring soft words in her ear as an invisible hand strokes her hair, lulling her to sleep. There is no singing, only the whisper of the dying wind, wrapping its distant arms around her.

She promises, and she receives.

Annie is grateful for the one night of peace she is granted, grateful for the invisible hand wiping away the imaginary tears from her cheeks, a smooth thumb to caress her cheek and guide her to the gates of slumber.

It's only a wish, but she imagines waking up somewhere other than here, other than the Stohess District within these condemning walls.

* * *

Hopefully.

* * *

/chapter

Partner to "dream".

Also: can you tell? These are Annie's nightmares...and her dreams...but what is real and what is not?

(I guess you can decide ~)


	22. gem

ehhh.

. this just reminds me that **Emeralds** is still on hiatus OTL

**disclaimer: SnK is not mine, but you know what is? my homework.**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. gem .xxx_

* * *

He can't tell if Ymir's eyes show surprise or shock or suspicion. She ducks into shadow, and he remains silent, lost in his thoughts.

* * *

Christa is going to die, and right then and there, he wants to grab the girl and just cradle her in his massive hands, but he realizes he is completely, utterly, and helplessly human, so instead he watches Ymir the titan howl through the air.

* * *

The blood seeps through the bandage, and he revels at how warm it is. Crimson red like garnet soaked in sins.

But not a ruby.

Because he finds that simply the word _ruby_ on his tongue is bittersweet; he thinks of Annie, but he doesn't know why.

* * *

He thinks of jumping off the wall.

* * *

Ymir hangs in a sling, exhausted out of consciousness. But it doesn't matter to Reiner, because the Scouting Legion is in a tight spot. There is no breach in the wall, and he thinks he doesn't know why.

"What's going on?"

* * *

But Bertholdt is there, and he can't leave Bertholdt; he doesn't jump.

* * *

_Ruby_ is the passion of a lover, given to her in hopes that her love will burn just as passionately and brightly and fervently.

_Ruby_ is the correction of evils from a mistaken friendship, to right the wrongs that he hadn't meant to cause.

But he can't think of any wrongs, because he doesn't remember.

A _ruby_ is a precious thing.

* * *

He repeats it countless times on his tongue until it is meaningless.

* * *

And then, when _ruby_ has nothing but two syllables and a strange thickness in his throat, he reaches over to Eren.

"I have to talk to you."

* * *

Annie is not a ruby; Annie is a sapphire.

* * *

_Sapphire _is sincerity, a piece of his soul.

_Sapphire_ is his entire devotion to her and her alone.

But he knows that can't be true, because his heart is torn in a thousand pieces. He can't let go of Bertholdt, who paces anxiously behind him. He can't let go of Eren, who has an odd sense of determination, a driving force with as much gravity as a fleeting star. He can't possibly let go of Christa; but who exactly is Christa, and why has he become so attached?

* * *

The wound heals discreetly, the blood of a garnet fading on his skin.

* * *

_Garnet _is a long and lasting love.

* * *

If that is _garnet_, then what is vengeance? Because he can't distinguish between the two when she comes, when those pained eyes hidden beneath ebony hair flash before him. She's going to kill him.

* * *

Mikasa is garnet stone, half polished, half not.

She is a time traveler, through pain and happiness and memories.

She has friends, she has Eren, she has Armin, she has faith and strength and firm belief.

She has the will to survive, to see the future and live with her family.

* * *

She does not, however, have Reiner's love.

* * *

That, in fact, is something he cannot determine he even has.

* * *

Not anymore, anyway.

* * *

/chapter

nyagghhhhhhh


	23. falsity

Long one!

**Disclaimer: SnK is not mineeeeeee.**

Note: GAH I GOTTA DO HOMEWORK

gonna play mixed doubles with my coach

and win the Open. Yes. Gotta do it.

SIE SIND DAS ESSEN UND WIR SIND DIE JAEGER.

Note 2: this one was fun...? XD

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. falsity .xxx_

* * *

Warmth seeped from his fingers, leaving his skin an alarmingly pale shade of icy white. A thin blanket was draped over his shoulders, but it hardly sufficed. If he squinted hard enough, he could detect a fine layer of frost accumulated on the windowpane.

He had the loveliest dream, but he couldn't remember it.

He crawled out of the creaking bunk, which sank under his weight and meant for a child, it seemed, because his feet would stick out over the edge. Deciding it was late enough, he wrestled Reiner from the tightly-gripped sleep that he wished he still had. The other simply buried his face into the dusty pillow and rolled away.

A knock at the door interrupted his efforts to rouse the sleeping soldier, and Bertholdt padded over to it. When the door swung ajar, he found himself chest to face with Connie, the shorter boy's hand poised to knock again.

"Squad Leader Mike told me to tell you that breakfast will be over if you don't get up," said Connie. Bertholdt thought two things: the first, was that Connie's familiar voice, half raspy, half nasally, with a pinch of sarcasm, was eerily reassuring. The second, however, was a slow-registering shock at the time.

"What time is it?"

"Late." Connie flashed a trademark grin, despite the dark circles under his eyes and the bedraggled ruffle to his uniform collar. Bertholdt wouldn't be surprised if Springer had donned his shirt backwards that day.

A second question: "Squad Leader Mike told you?"

More often than not, Bertholdt's attempts at humor ended in vain, for he was hardly the ideal comedian. But Connie laughed, because it was a ray of sun shining through that bleak —snowy?— day.

"He didn't sniff me, if that's what you're asking." A pause. "Just kidding, Nanaba told me. The odds of Squad Leader Mike choosing to talk rather than sniff is less likely than holding a conversation with _you_. You sure are talkative today."

Bertholdt shrugged.

Then, a certain Sasha Braus chose that very moment to bound down the hallway and grab Connie's shoulders with the utmost seriousness.

"_Connie_, there's no _bread_ left."

Without further explanation, she snatched Connie's arm and proceeded to drag him down the corridor.

"What was _that_?"

Reiner strode up to the door and slammed it shut, very nearly catching Bertholdt's toe.

"What time is it?" snapped the fair-haired soldier, tugging his uniform jacket on and plopping back down on the bed unceremoniously. Bertholdt, supposing that his silence would serve more than enough, pulled the door open once more and strode out. A surprised Reiner watched after him, wide-eyed, as the taller warrior took a brisk stride out into the hall.

The squelch of snow underfoot was jarring; Bertholdt stepped outside cautiously, contemplating the crispness of the fluffy white before him. Once accustomed to the sharp sounds — a morning birdcall, the crunch of ice, and the eternal chirp of a cricket, even in the morning — and filled to the core with a lungful of chilled air, Bertholdt ventured out around the perimeter of the series of cabins they stayed in. Cabins didn't seem like the word, in all honesty.

A small lodge, owned by a modest former farmer and his pleasant wife. A temporary haven of sorts for the Scouting Legion, where, for a night, they could spare the time to play cards like the Military Police would do on a daily basis.

The wind bites his ears, and he feels his nose reddening.

The horses are blanketed and huddled in a small shed, where they'd been turned out the night before. Oddly enough, Bertholdt can't help but wonder why they weren't stabled down at the farmer's more than adequate barn. Wasn't there a snowstorm last night? He couldn't seem the remember, only recalling the fact that he'd slept more soundly than he had in a long time.

Was there snow on the ground yesterday?

He couldn't think of the day before.

The more his mind delved into the hours, rolling back along a list of events, he began to forget them. Had he had corn soup or a buttered roll for dinner yesterday? Had he dreamed of the precious slab of meat on his plate or had he seriously devoured such a rarity last night? Bertholdt supposed the former.

No, he had not had either. Didn't the farmer serve a fine meal of mashed potatoes, bland as they were, that delighted Sasha so greatly that she'd attempted to wipe the table clean with her tongue? He vividly recalled a thousand bread rolls stacked in a sweetly scented wicker basket, its handle dyed in spring blues and pinks, with—

"They're out of bread."

His own voice startled him.

Why couldn't he remember?

The snow grew thinner and thinner as he trudged onwards, his feet growing increasingly laboriously into the forest. Under a canopy of heavy, evergreen pines, their needled arms stretching so far as to block out the cold morning sun, the snow faltered till there was none left. The white world hung at the lips of the forest, frosting across the edges of underbrush, but lingered as if an invisible boundary had sprung from the earth.

His toes dug into twigs and leaves and soil, so comforting and familiar that Bertholdt fell into a nearly forgotten habit of inspecting every inch of land around him. He overturned a thick, mossy slab of bark with his boot to find a large beetle living beneath. He thought of leaping over logs, but they were hardly big enough to warrant his effort. Back then, he would've scrambled over the top as Reiner struggled to even get a foothold on the humongous thing, and the nimble Annie somehow discovered a detour.

Curiously enough, Bertholdt spied a glint in the forest floor. He knelt, brushed away the layer of leaves and twigs. He nearly choked, for as he gingerly scooped the shining item into his palm, he realized that it was a jarringly nostalgic item — Annie's bracelet.

How Annie must be disheartened, to have lost her necklace again. He felt the urge to find her, but she couldn't possibly be there, in the forest, with him. Nonetheless, Bertholdt veered deeper into the forest, as if she would appear as a mockingbird and transform into a human.

Naturally, he checked and double checked the footing whenever he ventured into the underbrush. Reiner's childhood incident with a hidden trap that clamped into his foot was a horrendously clear memory, fresh in his mind like the scent of blood and the tug at his gut.

Hunger. He realized he was hungry.

Bertholdt pictured Annie perched in a tree, silently aiming, silently killing. An unfortunate rabbit, the skinny and stringy kind, might fall to her arrow of fate.

She held a finger to her lips — quiet, she beckoned.

The arrow was pulled back, but evergreens rustled and — no, those weren't evergreen, those were great, leafy monstrosities whose dark oak arms shook under the weight of his confusion.

Right then and there, his eyes had not deceived him. Annie was not his imagination, Annie was _there_. She hissed; her prey escaped. But as soon as she leapt down to the ground, the grating crunch of branches shook him from his trance.

"A-Annie," he began, holding out her necklace. "What are you—"

But it was devastatingly cold, so, so cold, and the trees were gone and all the snow that he'd tormented came whirling back with a vengeance. How angry the snow was, for tempting it as it waited beyond an invisible fence at the edge of the forest. As soon as Annie's feet hit the ground, the fence toppled and the fearsome white overtook them like a storm of retaliation.

"Annie, your bracelet!"

He thrust it into her hands, then, clasping her delicate fingers within his larger ones. Her skin radiated warmth, and she showed no sign of being affected by the snow — only a slight widening of her eyes when he pressed the trinket into her hands, a trickle of appreciation.

She was small and warm and he simply wanted to draw her into the circle of his arms but before he could even move a muscle, the snow engulfed him in all its blinding fury and he couldn't help but fear the fact that he couldn't shake off the weight hanging from every fiber of his being. As if he couldn't get up, as if he never rose from the forlornly plain bunk.

But the trace outline of Annie's hand, burned into his own skin, told him that she had been more real than anything.

* * *

Warmth seeps from his fingers, leaving his skin an alarmingly pale shade of icy white. A thin blanket is draped across his broad shoulders, but it serves no purpose. He sees, from the corner of his eye, a slab of light through the window, and a grassy knoll just outside. It's cloudy, but the nonchalant sheep in the sky float by as they graze on air, and their shadows shade the rise and fall of green hills, wind riffling through a sea of emerald.

He contemplates.

He's had the worst dream, but he can't seem to remember it.

An echo of warmth on his hands, and that is all that remains.

* * *

/chapter

SnKception.

lol.

I remember I did an animeception once, and it went on and on and on and on and ONNNNNNNN.


	24. impression

idk another semi-long one?

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK because if I can't even write a decent essay (dammit) how could I possibly hope to master the beauty that is snk?**

I only swim Free!.

**NOTE: If you can't tell, the last few chapters have been linked (I like doing that) and all about a series of dreams. (a lot of BertlAnnie) DREAMS I TELL YOU.**

**Note 2: a lot of it is meant to be up to your imagination, mmkay?**

uh.

here you go.

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. impression .xxx_

* * *

It occurs to her that she has forgotten when she'd stopped denying his presence. He pulls up a chair every day, without fail, for such a long time that she can't remember if she had always accepted his devoted time, or if there had occurred a period where she finally relented.

"Did you sleep well?" he asks.

_Yes_.

* * *

She was about to scream.

Scream to the world her anguish and pain, the only kind of suffering that a small child would understand, because here she was, at a loss, suffocating herself with tears. Her overly large sweater was splotched with teardrops, and the amount of rage in her tiny body was overwhelming. If she didn't explode first, she would shrivel into a curled up nothing of nothings, because without her mother, Annie would forget who she was and why she was here.

Annie existed, but at the same time, she did not.

Her heart pounded as if it were the training dummy she kicks away at until the wood underneath splinters and the entire thing cracks in two. It beat so loudly, pulsating through her ears, racking her body and her very core, that she didn't realize the tall, meek, ruddy-faced boy standing before her.

He very nearly blended in with the background, so much so that it was frustrating. He had long legs and long arms and an eternally frightened face, always on the verge of tears. _And_, not to mention, he was the victim of the gods of clumsiness, doomed forever to trip up whatever they were working on.

"Go _away_!" she screeched, fists clenching. He balked. "Leave me _alone_!"

Her voice pierced the air like nothing could, as if a boundary in the sky had had its membrane sliced through with a needle.

"I-I'm sorr—"

On a whim, she shoved him. Expecting him to shove back, she instinctively continued beating upon the poor child, and despite the fact that at five years old, he was more than a head taller than her, she still threw him around like a pitiful ragdoll. To say the least, Bertholdt ended up on his sore bottom more than once before scrambling to his feet again in a dogged attempt to relay his message.

After screaming for him to leave her alone another five times, she realized that he wouldn't leave until she let him finish his sentence. Poor things, both of them, befuddled and sore and full of tears.

Her tears, apparently, were contagious, and the moment she accidentally let loose a storm of sobs, he breaks into reckless wails.

_Why are you crying too?_ She wanted to say, but he looks so miserable that she can't help but feel sad too, even though she was just as dejected to begin with.

"What do you want?" she snapped, sniffling.

"I, um, I-I wanted to—"

She wanted to either kick him in the shin or run away, because if he didn't stop rubbing his nose and crying and stalling and…

"—to give this back to you." He shoved something into her hands, and she noticed that he'd been holding it tightly within his fingers the whole time.

It's her mother's bracelet.

Her mother.

"You found it?"

"You, um, dropped it back where the paths cross," he said simply. "It's important to you, right?"

He was annoying, for sure. A clumsy crybaby who was so nervously jittery that she wondered if tying him to a tree would make the tree quake. But, in that moment, she knew that he was invaluable.

At least, to her five-year-old mind, he was an important person.

_Important._

* * *

It occurs to her that she has forgotten when she'd stopped denying his presence. He sits on the porch next to her every day — at least, he used to — and after that he never failed to exchange a glance with her at some point before dinner. Back then, he followed her for such a long time that, after a summer of five-year-old quarrels and quiet sitting — with, perhaps, a kitten curled up between them and the moon playing with their minds — that perhaps she had always accepted his company, or maybe she'd relented from change of heart.

It's important to her, this bond.

So when Armin asks her if she sleeps well, and he disappears in the depths of an ocean crevice where all the dreams go, she whispers _yes_, but actually, it is the warmth and the familiarity of Bertholdt's name on her lips that awaken her.

* * *

/chapter

**Note 3: adult!dream!Armin is a figment of imagination... OR IS IT?**


	25. wings

back to short ones!

hehe headcanon: you'll see.

**Disclaimer: yadda yadda you know the drill.**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. wings .xxx_

* * *

He has, by his estimation, approximately three minutes before the wrath of the devil, no of Shadis, will descend upon him.

With this knowledge in mind, he whips out a knife and hacks away at the stiff, winter-frozen earth. His work is quick and efficient, his strokes deep and effective. Once the hole is of an adequate size, its dimensions wide enough for his object of choice to fit inside, he risks a glance over his shoulder. He has a minute left.

Reiner stuffs his notebook — or, rather, it is a quaint assembly of misshapen papers cut in the strangest geometric forms — into the hole he has created. It is not a grave, he tells himself, but a time capsule. Here, he thinks, as he pats the soil back down thoroughly, letting the copse of trees and underbrush fall back into place around it, is where his emotions lie. Safekeeping? Not quite. Time capsule for someone else? Perhaps.

"Braun," comes the chilling drawl of the one and only drill instructor. Shadis has deemed any further questions unnecessary, because Reiner spins on his heels and salutes with such prideful fervor that it is enough to send him off with a warning. The warrior trudges away, watching Shadis patrol the area; though he knows that the man will never find what he has hidden.

He'll never find that notes in which, very carefully, very secretly, Reiner has jotted down poetry and prose of the walls falling. The pages of thought and identity, things to jog his memory as to _who he is_. Little scribbled annotations, including the wry resemblance of Shadis to the broken, quaking commander of the Scouting Legion five years ago. Reiner has seen that face, and he knows very well what has become of that man. A respectable discharge — no, a respectable new determination. Reiner, as a warrior, honestly feels a degree of respect for this man who, though once shattered to the core by the guilt of his uselessness outside the walls, has devoted himself to the cause in order to create the best and only the best. To pass on the duty and the dream of what he couldn't do to a younger, more promising, more hopeful generation.

Hope.

He has written that word somewhere in his notebook.

* * *

Or, perhaps he is mistaken, and the word that truly resounds like a death bell tolling is something else.

Perhaps, it is _home_.

* * *

/chapter

ep: 1 - commander of the scouting legion

eps later: Keith Shadis, suspiciously similar to that very man, only now with a beard and a bald head... *ominous music here*

Popular headcanon, that one is.

oh my gOD I NEED TO STUDY


	26. frail

Hi guys! Okay it's official:

**CURRENTLY ON HIATUS**

but I may update every now and then if I can't handle the stress lol. (that's just backwards, don't you think?)

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK because Sie sind das essen und WE ONLY SWIM FREE FOR THE TEAM ((SOB FOREVER))**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. frail .xxx_

* * *

The hunger that strikes him is sudden, violent.

_How can hunger be violent_?

But it was, and it is, and it will be for all time, because the slab of bread akin to a hefty rock hardly crumbles under his feeble attempt to chew, and he's lying in the tall, tall green grass trying to subdue the terror that clamps his throat shut and broils his stomach in nauseating apprehension.

Perhaps it is not hunger, but simply anxiety.

The wall is within their sights — though, at the moment, it is so far that it's hardly taller than his thumbnail if he holds his hand out at arm's length. The billowing plains of grass, half a mild green and half a wheat yellow, are taller than him. Sometimes they conceal his companions, and he is wrought with unbidden anxiousness that freezes him to the spot until Reiner tugs his sleeve gently and he receives a less than pleased nudge in the back from Annie.

He decides, then, that it is his propensity for excessive fretfulness that has him shaking on the ground, little stalks and stems typically trampled underfoot catching his attention. He is like a horse unwilling to take the bit; his jaw is clamped shut, and he is everywhere except thinking about the fact that if Annie forces the bread against his chapped lips again, his mouth will bleed.

"_Eat_," she says, and when she kicks him so hard in the gut that he cries out, Reiner forcefully shoves the rock bread into his unwilling throat.

He tastes salt in the bland roll, and realizes that it's the tears rolling down his face. Sitting up, the ever-growing wall of civilization is obscured by the swaying sea of leaves, rocking side to side as if in a slow, intricate dance of amity. It's hypnotic, and instantly, he is soothed. The quiver in his stomach that once resided with a pit of wrath settles, and he finds himself gnawing determinedly on what must be the last of their rations. Even the block of cheese is gone, the rare apple or two eaten away until almost nothing remains, and the slip of precious rabbit meat devoured at first chance.

They have been travelling for a long time.

And in three days, they will reach the wall.

* * *

He doesn't remember the journey being so quick. But as he clings desperately to Reiner's back, the miles crumble beneath each stride and as Wall Rose diminishes behind them, he can't help but think of how nice it would be to drop to the earth and curl up among the whorls of grass and flowers, and simply forget.

* * *

/chapter

Bertholdt is not frail, though. Simply withdrawn, contemplative...

AS ALWAYS: a lot of stuff is up to the reader's interpretation! Go where you like, with what you fancy, what you deem suitable for quenching your heart's thirst and desire!

*whirls away on a Levi-face pug*


	27. moon

Ohoho, taking a break from English homework yoooo~

Here's one, dedicated to the last episode of SnK!

(can you spot the one part taken from an earlier chapter?)

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK, but HEY tomorrow's October, and the chappy's coming soon...!**

**Note: Remember when an arm was thrown at Erwin? HEY COMMANDER, THINK YOU MIGHT NEED THAT?!**

okey dokey.

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. moon .xxx_

* * *

Pain registers like halos of white on the gates of hell. There's a crushing pressure on her face, and while she herself is still intact, all in one piece, safe — as safe as one can be when the entire world is your enemy — her nose is crushed and there's a seeping cold as his brutish titan fingers sink into her forehead, her giant skull falling way like a gritty, sopping sugar cube, half dissolved and half unbroken.

There's someone screaming, and she wants them to quiet down because _it hurts_ and if she could just lie there in peace and silence, the world would be happy.

But the screaming won't stop, and as she whirls around, elbows striking in frantic vehemence, hoping to land a hit, she realizes that the screams are emanating from her own throat, and she can't breathe, she can't breathe, the blood is everywhere.

He rips off pieces of her like she is a cotton ball, and his rotten, stinking flesh is hotter than coals; she is battling a mass of fire, rolled into the wrath of one vengeful boy.

She tosses him aside, but he's clinging to her, and he'll cling to her until they both fall into hell, and the memory of her father flashes before her eyes.

He's tall and sturdy, steadying, soothing. His cotton shirt is rough, but his scent is familiar — like pine and hazelnuts, a reassuring blend of sawdust and the saddle soap he oils down his horse's tack with. He radiates warmth and worry and an eternally creased brow; she knows it all, has memorized it all, without ever really touching him.

So she finds it strange that, at this point in time, she recalls one of the only times he has ever embraced her, has ever held his own daughter to his heart so that the rhythm of her blood pulsing through her veins matches his own. Calloused hands enclose around her shoulders, scars and nicks and old wounds marring them. She remembers his breath on her neck as he wraps his arms tight around her, begging her to _come back_, engraving his memory into her mind forever, because _he is on her side_, and she will never let go.

Never.

His knuckles are knobby, growing stiff with arthritis, but he strings an arrow and teaches the trade to Bertholdt and Reiner just as he has done for many, many others, and when he oils down his bow and she sits by him, she is struck by the painfulness of this memory, because she can't remember his face anymore, only a faint smile and rough hands guiding hers into a position.

A bird falls from a distant tree, the arrowhead embedded in its sorrowful heart.

She grits her teeth and screams — the tears stream down her cheeks, and they sizzle into blinding steam around her, her skin pulled taught to the titan essence that stems from her heart.

Fear zips up her spine and she tries to outrun it; clawing her way up the wall, even though her right hand is fingerless and she's dangling by her left…

When she falls, she is light and heavy and overcome with regret. She is overcome with pain and fear and a darkness that consumes her whole.

The sharp pang of an unrecognizable emotion slices through her core like the iridescent glow of an unnaturally bright butterfly sparkling in a dull setting. There are thousands of images, but she can't sort them all. They come to her in flashes, urgent yet slow, one hundred and one memories scrolling past her during each millisecond, igniting everything that has been, is, and will be her life.

It is Reiner, proudly skinning a squirrel he'd caught.

It is Bertholdt, pondering everything and nothing on the porch.

It is the little black cat, licking its paws with deliberate slowness.

It is her father, shoulders shaking in agonized sobs.

* * *

And, far, far away, it is the moon, remembering who she is.

* * *

/chapter

REMEMBER

[10] Fear:

_It's an endless dream, full of muffled voices and soft pitter-patters. The soft ping of water dripping echoes softly, and the faces become rippled patterns in the surface. She feels rage and anger and sadness wafting towards her, but they are thud drearily into a cold wall, and there is nothing but emptiness inside her._

* * *

_Somewhere far, far away, Annie knows that someone remembers who she is._

* * *

**Note 2: I don't like how they changed many things in the anime... -3-**


	28. delusional

ehehe one more tonight

**Disclaimer: not mineee you know the drill [see all chapters before] _insert trollololololol here_**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. delusional .xxx_

* * *

The weight drops on him like a stone.

It wasn't like the kind of weight and pressure that came with ramming one's shoulder into all the adversities that came into life's path — no, it was more like a pang of dread and apprehension and simply _knowing_ that something had gone wrong.

He nearly falls off his horse, but he lets no one know. They're covering the grassy plains in long, leaping strides, but it takes ages to see the one tree in the distance move an inch.

"Hey," he says, warily. "Did you, well…"

Unheard over the beating of hooves, he sits back in the saddle and contemplates. First, he thanks his horse for its lovely loping stride, a true rocking horse on which he can ponder the endless streams of confusions that truly like to stick themselves to him like burrs. Secondly, he glances over at Bertholdt, who is riding so stiffly that he could be mistaken for a scarecrow strapped to a horse.

He is mistaken; Bertholdt has keen ears.

"I felt it," he says.

Or, rather, Reiner sees his lips move, but hears no sound over the clattering as they canter onto a cobbled path.

A roundabout look at the rest of the crew, and by the furrowed brows and relentless grips on the reins, he knows that he's not the only one.

"It's Ann—"

He is cut off, probably fortunately, because Mike has pulled up his horse and they are loping around a small property fenced in by old rails and barbed wire. It is uncannily similar to the humble farmer's lodging where they'd remained just a day before — so similar that, on closer inspection, Reiner realizes that they've gone in a complete circle.

The sky is dizzying blue, and it's suddenly so scorching hot that pools of sweat coagulate on his thin shirt. Bertholdt is saying his name; no, he's mouthing _Reiner, Reiner are you all right? _Reiner is not all right, to be honest, because the next thing he knows, there's a heavy _thud_ and someone kills the gas; the lights are gone.

* * *

It's as if he hit his head hard, and can't remember a thing.

But the pit in his stomach remains, and by nightfall, he's staring out the window past Bertholdt's shoulder — the poor boy is perched on a creaky chair, staring at the silvery clouds like a heartbroken lover — at the moon.

Unless he's dreaming again, the moon makes a face.

He wants to laugh, and maybe he does, because Bertholdt turns. Reiner begins to guffaw at the face in the moon, because it's not the famed Man in the Moon, nor is it a handsome spirit whose features are prominently featured in the fullness of that evil, white eye. In fact, the moon has a bored look to it, dry and hardly amused, and the hook of its nose and the heavy-lidded eyes are so striking that Reiner can't help himself.

The moon looks like Annie.

* * *

/chapter

Can you decide when Reiner's dreaming and when he's not?

CAN YOU TELL?!

[because I sure can't lololol _insert another trolololol here_]


	29. hers

Idek.

Chapter soon?

**Disclaimer: SnK isn't mine, because whoooo hoooooooo. (lol?)**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. hers .xxx_

* * *

The dull thud in his head lulls the world to a blur. Staring at the red and white checkered tablecloth blurs his vision, and everything falls to fuzzy pinks and waves of nausea. His breath comes in short bursts, his throat closes, and he can't even gasp for help.

Fear chokes him like nothing else can, and through gritted teeth and tears of terror, he wonders what would happen if he succumbed to the clawing beast that dwelt within his heart.

* * *

"Hey, Bertholdt, if you're not going to eat that, can I have it?"

Sasha's intrusive hand hovering over his plate jerks him from his wandering thoughts, and he glances down. His plate, consisting of a meager two rolls with a chunk of hard-earned butter, is untouched. He has no appetite, even though his stomach twists and clenches in empty anguish.

"Sure." He picks up a roll and places it in Sasha's worshipful hand. Before Connie can snatch it from her grasp, Sasha has ripped a massive chunk of bread from the roll, clutching it like a rabid dog between her teeth, growling as she keeps the rest of the precious bread out of Connie's reach.

Queasy, Bertholdt pushes his chair back with a screech. The room is dull and dry; he can see dust particles floating serenely in the weak beam of sunlight that filters through the grungy windows. The air is dank and unpleasant to inhale. He goes outside, though the snowy weather hardly suffices to quench his thirst for a fresh breath of air.

His gut squeezes painfully, gratingly, and he can't tell if he's hungry or just sick to his stomach.

Freshly fallen snow crunches beneath his feet as he meanders from the dining hall to the training area. Oddly enough, Mikasa is hanging from one of the standard gear sets, motionless yet dauntless. Her eyes stare straight forward — she sees nothing on the outside, but is turned to the inside. Bertholdt walks past her quickly, unnerved.

He isn't surprised to find Eren and Armin a little ways off, the former agitatedly trying to fix his belt straps while the latter simply whistles absently. Armin glance up for a split second, and meets Bertholdt's eyes. His blue ones drop away quickly, but Bertholdt's stomach twists nervously at the depth in those eyes, sapphire like the sea.

_Someday, we'll see the ocean, _Eren had said at lunch one day. _Someday, we'll see it all._

But Bertholdt had seen it already — he'd seen the terror and the fear and the despair that fell upon humanity the day he came knocking at its door. If he were to pour out his heart's regrets, breaking through Wall Maria would be his greatest.

No, not his greatest. But one of them.

His breath puffs out in a gentle cloud before him, and his toe scuffs into a patch of stiff, dead grass. He imagines it is green, greener than emeralds, greener than the thickest forest.

As green as his mother's eyes, which have long since faded to gray in a memory he cannot recall.

He must've fallen asleep, because someone has scooped him up, and his head lolls against a slim shoulder. He curls his tiny fingers around a lock of dark hair, the same ebony shade as his own, and his eyes see the apple trees and the picnic table and the seemingly out-of-place congregation of hunters taking an afternoon break in the orchards.

There is a bowl of freshly picked apples — some a bit too ripe — set on the table, primarily to keep the red and white checkered tablecloth from fluttering away.

He is awake now, and he reluctantly allows himself to be lowered from the comforting bosom that cradles him so close.

"Go play with Reiner, love," says the gentle voice, melodious and smooth and sweet like honey. He clutches to her knee, hands wrapped tightly, possessively around the coarse cotton skirt that swishes with her every step and falls in uniform gray pleats. She is a tall, thin woman, but strong in her bony knees and elbows. She has a long nose that doesn't quite fit her face, but melds just finely with his own. He has his father's eyebrows and cheekbones, but his mother's nose and lips and eyes. "Go on," she says, urging him towards the rambunctious boy wresting with Berik under the trees. "I'll be right over here."

He hesitantly step away from her, and she kneels briefly to kiss his cheek.

Her eyes are green, so, so green, greener than the grass and any emerald that may grace the unknown world. They are striking against her otherwise plain features — dark hair, gray skirt and loose coal blouse, pale skin and long face.

"Okay." His small hand lets go of her, and he turns around.

* * *

When he comes back, Mikasa is very stoically instructing Eren how to shoot one trigger of the maneuver gear and turn 180 degrees without twisting the other side in a knot. Armin perches on a fence post, almost as if he's too tired to involve himself in Eren's antics — which is understandable — and swings his legs back and forth.

Bertholdt walks past them, and finds himself at the trainees' cabins. He walks to the end of the first one. Inside, there is one mirror, floor to ceiling, cracked, dusty, and filled with inexplicably dark grime. He stares at himself for a long time, and notices that his hair is falling over his eyes, past his ears, at his jaw. It's time to cut it.

His mother used to cut his hair, sitting before a mirror in similar condition. She would snip at his hair, but it was thick and dark and she couldn't bear to cut it as short as Reiner's, despite its awkward messiness. Bertholdt's father propensity to complain about his shaggy, disheveled appearance at dinner never persuaded that woman.

He's staring now, at the mirror, at his sad, tired gray eyes. He is gaunt and slightly thin, even though he is muscled and fit and a trainee who has made it past the first six months. His old, raggedy pants are too short for him, too small for him, and the large shirt he assumed would fit him for at least the next half a year is too tight for him; it lays discarded at the bottom of a shared clothes pile, where the boys haphazardly throw their items and pick up someone else's when they need it.

When they appear behind him, he quite nearly jumps out of his skin and three feet into the air. It's a wonder he didn't hit his head, despite his fright.

"You need a haircut," Reiner says simply, flicking Bertholdt's ear with his forefinger, a grin tugging at his lips. There's a crease between Reiner's brows; he's deep in thought, halfway between trainee and hometown boy. Bertholdt ignores his friend's confusion and glances at Annie, who kicks a shoe — Jean's old sandals — under the nearest bed, uninterested.

"You should grow your hair out like Mikasa's," jokes Reiner, "it would look lovely on you."

He imagines himself with hair that draped ridiculously past his shoulders.

"He would look like his mother," Annie commented bluntly. Bertholdt doesn't say anything, doesn't let them know he feels a pang of hurt and regret, but instead stares intently at the mirror. With a start, he realizes that his typically slate-gray eyes are glinting with a strange green; a trick of the light, perhaps. His mother's face jumps out at him, and with his hair hanging long down his forehead and his eyes bursting with an abnormal hue of jade, he sees his mother in everything that defines him. Even the way he carries himself resembles his mother; tall and straight, not quite a proud stance, but not dejected either.

"Momma's boy," snickers Reiner, patting the taller boy on the back.

Bertholdt fingers a lock of hair by his ear, but Annie catches his sleeve and pulls his hand down.

"I'll cut it for you." She opens the nearest drawer and pulls out a pair of scissors, as if she had known they would be there. "Sit."

Her hands flutter quickly, unexpectedly so, and snippets of ebony hair drop to the creaky wooden floorboards. Annie pointedly makes carefully aimed jabs at a mindful Reiner, who, though constantly thinking up new jokes about Annie the hairdresser, nimbly dodges the scissor blades.

When Annie is done, she stands and leaves. She doesn't wait for them; she is never seen with them.

Reiner yawns. "I'll meet you at the western stables. I think we've got a riding lesson combined with gear maneuvering."

But Bertholdt doesn't really pay attention, because he's staring at his reflection, slightly distorted by the dirty mirror and cracked glass. He doesn't hear Reiner leave, nor does he realize that a few other boys have filed in, and are rummaging through their belongings or the massive pile of shared clothes.

He sees his mother in the mirror, with her long nose and thick lashes, her thick black hair that fell to her shoulder blades and her dragging skirts that he hung onto precariously.

But he can't see her green eyes, her green, green eyes, because as she disappears within his own reflection, all he can see is his own face.

And his eyes are gray, like the sky as a second fall of snow descends upon them.

A cloud passes over them, and the sun hides.

It is dark.

* * *

/chapter

I totally just made up Mrs. Fubar.

But she's a nice lady; plain, but kind.

*does a strange, alien dance*

++donotquestionthestrangnessofthiswriter++


	30. eyes

yep yep

I ship everything

everything except like, two ships

hehe

**disclaimer: SnK isn't mine, because they took out all the good Armin scenes in ep. 25 man.**

**note 1: there are two types of anime - "I AM FREE" + proceeds to attack titan!Annie, and "I AM FREE" + jumps in a pool and dolphins awayyyy**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. eyes .xxx_

* * *

She doesn't know why, but it's as if someone pushes her shoulder, gives her a nudge, compels her to walk up beside Marlo and grab the other man's arm. She isn't afraid of the gun, pointing at her head. She looks up the length of its barrel like it isn't there.

And maybe that's why a flicker of fear crawls like maggots across the man's face, through his eyes, across every inch of face muscle until he's frozen solid with that expression, terrified to the core of this girl, she who stands more than a head shorter, smaller, _weaker_, but not.

He drops his stance.

* * *

His eyes are blue, like hers, but they are a warm blue, a comforting rush of ocean waves lapping serenely on the sandy shore. Hers are a harsh crash of torrents against rocky cliffs, cold crystals of petrified emotion.

But he babbles on nonetheless in his soft voice, his gentle tones that lilt when he becomes excited. He's got a slight accent to her ears, the way he pauses on his _m_'s and doesn't exaggerate his vowels. His hair, like hers, is a light head of wheat, but his is more golden, more rich, thick like a squarely cut curtain. Everything of her own is cold, drained, not exactly faded, but frozen. He is the head of corn, perfect for harvest, vulnerable; she is the deadened blade of grass that is flattened to the ground, waiting for the time when no other may trample across it.

His laugh is nervous; he glances at her to see if she's listening.

She nods, and his eyes light up. He smiles, if only slightly, and it's one of the few times she sees him truly smile.

* * *

He smiles much more now, but it's more of a wan, tired expression. His brow furrows more often, his lips pursed, his cerulean eyes shifted to heavy, concentrated black as he sinks beneath the light of a gasping candle, flipping through a series of documents splotched with illegible ink scribbles. His hair is pulled back into a long tail, and it lays between his shoulder blades like a bundle of silken wheat; oddly, she yearns to reach out and touch it.

But she is immobile, a spectator, a statue.

He glances at her and speaks. It's the same quiet voice, the same soft lips, with his smooth, extended consonants and light, crisp syllables. There are only a few phrases he slurs, but there is one word that always comes from his mouth clearly: the moment he utters _titan_, it jolts her from her nonexistent sleep like a bolt of lightning.

"She looks peaceful," says the woman with the glasses. "Do you think she's dreaming?"

Yes, she often dreams. She dreams of grassy fields where she lies down, immersed in a sea of long green stalks billowing in tandem, Bertholdt's hand in her left and Reiner's hand in her right, arguing amiably over what kind of shape that cloud right above them is supposed to be making.

"She is," Armin says, touching his fingers to the crystal. "I'm sure."

_But not always_, she wants to say, but all she can do is watch as he turns, the edge of his long, dark cloak disappearing through the doorway.

* * *

Sometimes, there are faces she doesn't recognize. Sometimes, she wonders who has died and who has not. Once in a while, there is an angry face — a boy who cannot forgive her, yet cannot forgive himself either — or an impassive face — the man who accompanies the bespectacled woman, stoic with trained control — or a stolen face — the long nose and gray-green eyes of a boy, a man, hunched in a cloak, stealing precious minutes with her — and a forgetful face — he's got broad shoulders and an eternal crease between his brows, but he's always a warrior now — and she watches them all.

At one point, she thinks she sees Mina and Marco and Dazz and Thomas, and she thinks, _this is it, this is where I end_, and it's almost all right because the way Marco offers his hand is so comforting, so inviting, that she is tempted to take it and let him lead her through the gates of heaven, but does heaven exist? Because she has sinned against all that is mankind, but she has done right in all that she has known. Where does she go? Why is it that, upon looking into Marco's whole face, she feels complete and utter relief because he is not the bloodied half-corpse she found dying in the streets, wheezing his last breaths?

She stares at Marco, who says nothing for the longest time.

_Why don't you take me? Why?_

But it isn't Marco, it's _Marlo_, and he's staring at her with the saddest expression on his face, the most melancholy smile one could muster. Such an expression can't exist, she reasons; such a heart-wrenching, rueful smile.

He's tall, maybe as tall as Bertholdt. And he carries two rifles, one of which he slips off his shoulder and leans it against a chair before her. She recognizes the initials scribbled in scratchy ink: _A.L._ It's hers.

"I found this, one day."

Silence, of course.

"I wanted to say," he begins, but he never finishes, because he doesn't know what to say at all.

"Marlo, we're not supposed to be in here."

The battling emotions on Hitch's face, even after so many years, is evidently unhidden across her otherwise pretty features. Her hair is impractically long, but it's clasped loosely in a tie.

"Give me a minute. It's been a long time…"

"Marlo."

At that moment, Armin briskly brushes past Hitch and into the room, his footsteps piercingly loud. He ignores them, as if they're not there, save for the quick glance he throws at Marlo. The effect is not lost on anyone; and she knows, she _knows_, that those eyes aren't Armin's — those are _her _eyes, and her eyes only, because there is no way that a man so kindhearted can muster that kind of icy strength.

Maybe that's why a flicker of fear crawls like wildfire across Marlo's face, through his eyes, across every inch of his face until he's burnt through his that expression, terrified to the core of this man who has seen a world of everything and anything and complete nothingness all in one lifetime.

Marlo bows his head and ducks out the door, Hitch falling in stride with him.

_That's not you._

"I think," Armin says, to the wall, to the chair, to the rifle labeled _A.L., _to no one in particular, "that you purposely taught us everything. Eren's fighting. Me. What do you think?" He turns to her then. "Am I right?"

_No._

"You can't fool me, Annie."

When he walks up to her, he places a hand on the crystal and stares with those beautiful, deep eyes, and she sees that he is no different from her, no warmer, no colder, but just as pained. Eyes that have seen death and blackness and the true heart of this cruel world are beautiful.

But his are exceptionally so.

_Stop waiting for me._

Armin smiles, picks up the rifle, examines it.

"I'll wait as long as it takes," he says, and he sits down in the plain wooden chair, the rifle pulled across his lap as if it is a storybook about to be opened, to be read until she falls asleep, perhaps for forever.

"Sometimes," Armin continues, running a thumb along the barrel of the weapon, "I wonder if they can hear you too."

She doesn't know. A chill runs through her, slowly, like molasses, because his eyes still hold the same hidden malice in them, and she isn't sure who she is speaking too.

"It's Armin," he reassures her, quietly. "It's always been Armin."

He glances at her, to see if she is listening. She doesn't move, but his eyes light up, and he is baby blue like the sky, like a bright jay swirling joyously through the air. And he smiles.

Eventually, he falls asleep in the chair, and she can't help but think he too is dreaming.

But, one of those blue, blue, blue eyes opens, and a sad smile pulls at his soft, round lips.

"Only sometimes," he says.

He closes his eyes.

* * *

/chapter

title was self-explanatory, no?

plus = future!Armin is fun to right

plus 2 = armin x annie is fun to write

gyahhhhh

should I watch Gintama

seems interesting


	31. garden

Eughh why is Reiner so hard to write.

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK, but now we know where Eren gets his angry expressions and NO HANNESSSSSSSS WHYYYY EARAGUGHHH**

**Note: When people don't understand the pain of the SnK fandom =_= eughh.**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. garden .xxx_

* * *

The jaws close around his best friend, and he can't help but remember Berik. The beady eyes, darker than coal and reflecting the malicious ebony of the night sky, devoid of stars, a titan's face appeared, its maw closing down on flesh. He still sees the greasy, stringy black hair clearly, the seven-meter class that appeared to be more than 15 meters to his child's eyes.

But this time it's Bertholdt, not Berik, and he can see the sling of saliva dripping from the roof of the titan's tongue. Its teeth aren't sharp, but instead, they are square incisors ready to slice into bone. Bertholdt is frozen to the core, and there's but a millisecond before his death descends upon him.

There's a fierce, scraping cry, and then it's a small ball of fury is upon them, pushing away the titan and saving Bertholdt.

Beady eyes and pointed fangs, a demon jaw and a witch's nose. Ymir exchanges glances with Bertholdt, and for a split second, Reiner is too shocked to comprehend her actions. She pushes them away, and the other titan is tackled to the ground. She has saved them; she _knows_.

She knows the truth.

There's blood on the ground, his sight is tainted with blurs and smears, and bodies are strewn across the landscape like flowers dotting the fields, but he lets them go.

His heart aches, and Bertholdt shivers on his shoulder. The titan are trying to eat him, but all he can think of is the look on Berik's face when he was eaten.

No, he can't even remember that.

* * *

"Do you remember anyone you ate?"

"No, I don't. Sorry."

* * *

If he ever gets the chance, Reiner will ask Armin what a "good person" ought to be.

* * *

/chapter

_garden of blood_

Uh. Homework. Right.

So I'm watching Gintama, anyone a fan? I'm on like episode 12 lol.


	32. wanderer

in the poetic mood.

{as in, I just wrote some elaborate poem thing for English homework, so I wanted to write something fun...}

WATCHING GINTAMA YES.

**Disclaimer: I don't own SnK because now Wednesdays are not free, nor are they for the team, and what is the point of Saturdays now and don't tell me the point is that there are no more pointless deaths because us SnK fans will talk you in circles and circles and- ooh is that Hanji wheeeee.**

**/guh need sleep**

* * *

**Three Warriors**

_xxx. wanderer .xxx_

* * *

_Wanderer, wanderer, lurking in the night._

_ Close all your windows and don't put up a fight._

_ Where is your family, oh wanderer of woes?_

_ Watch where you put your feet; they'll step on your toes._

* * *

_ Murderer, murderer, leaping through the trees,_

_ Close your heart and laugh away, just do as you please._

_ Where is your beloved, oh murderer of sin?_

_ Watch where you put your knife; sunken in the heart of kin._

* * *

_ Ponderer, ponderer, thinking through the lives,_

_ Open all your windows and simply count to five._

_ Where has your mind gone, oh ponderer of earth?_

_ Watch where you put your faith; cries of unforgiving mirth._

* * *

_ Malingerer, malingerer, lying through the truth,_

_ Open all the spider webs and dangle there aloof._

_ Where has your honesty gone, oh malingerer of lies?_

_ Watch where you put your tongue; the bird of hope will die. _

* * *

_ Warrior, warrior, bathing in the day,_

_ Search for that elusive glory and bathe in bloody rays._

_ Where has your memory gone, oh warrior of truth?_

_ Watch where you put your love; the misguided soldier's youth._

* * *

He awoke with a start, lungs burning as if he'd run a thousand miles in his sleep. In his fist, the crumpled piece of paper and its blurred pen ink. It was a page he'd read a while ago — had it been a year? Almost two? — from Reiner's notebook. Notebook would have been an exaggeration. The collection of ragged, torn sheets stolen from one classroom or the other sufficed as a journal of poetry for the broad-shouldered blond.

Bertholdt crawled out of bed and immediately regretted his decision. Winter bit harshly on their third year, relentlessly sending snowstorms up from what used to be Shiganshina. Nonetheless, the tall, stoic trainee slipped into his uniform, the belts stiffened with the cold. He tucked the paper into his left pocket and fastened the buckle that strapped across his chest. The leather was unforgiving in the blizzard's icy grip on weather.

Still short of breath, he padded outside, boots crunching in the freshly fallen snow. Each step was slow and excruciating; he felt as if each limb consisted of a thousand boulders, joints grating against each other like the plates of the earth. The light fall of snow dusted his shoulders with a layer of cold, wet powdered sugar.

He trudged to the dining hall, strides falling into an obligatory sort of rhythm.

* * *

When no one can see, Bertholdt pulled the paper from his left pocket and smoothed it out. Very cautiously, he glanced over its words with a regretful smile. Did Reiner ever notice that it had been slipped out of his raggedy assortment of papers? It was, in Bertholdt's opinion, the most powerful of all Reiner's experimental writings.

He knelt by the same spot Reiner had occupied just moments before, and scratched at the dirt until he felt parchment beneath his calloused fingertips. The wind snapped bitterly at his exposed neck — he intended to retreat inside as soon as possible — but he couldn't help staring at the folded paper one last time.

He shoved the sheet out of sight, hastily refilling the ominous paper grave with soil. Once it was inconspicuous and blended with its dry, gloomy surroundings, Bertholdt whipped around and ran back to the dorm.

Just outside, a majority of the trainees had abandoned whatever class was designated, and were constructing forts of snow. Several peeked over the white-packed walls to hurtle snowballs across the battlefield.

A pair of familiar, strong hands pushed Bertholdt to the side.

When he crashed down onto someone's wall, crushing it beneath his shoulder blades, Bertholdt wasn't sure whether he wanted to grimace or to smile at the soldier smiling down at him.

* * *

/chapter

*needs to stop watch Gintama and do homework asdhasjdfh*

high score on BC Calc quiz + smiley face from teacher on paper = ACHIEVEMENT.

:D

whoo I feel special.

/g'night


End file.
